Ronald Reagan Speech Wiki - User contributions [en]

USS Ingraham

2026-08-31T20:06:43Z

Reagan admin:

USS Ingraham is a name given to various United States Naval ships throughout history. The ships were named for Captain Duncan Ingraham who stood against 3 Austro-Hungarian ships in defense of [[Martin Koszta]]. Martin had emigrated to America and started the process of becoming a citizen, but was captured during a trip to Turkey. Ingraham received the Congressional Gold metal for his actions.

== Speech Relevance ==
From '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<blockquote>Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.</blockquote>
At the time of this speech, there had been 3 ships to bear the name of USS Ingraham. All were Destroyers. The US Navy never went more than five years without an Ingraham in service.
* The first was in service from 1918 until 1936.
* The second from 1941 until 1942, sinking in a collision.
* The third ship was built almost immediately and went into service in 1944. It served the US Navy until 1971 (participating in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War), when it was sold to Greece. There, it was in service for another 21 years, until 1992.

The fourth USS Ingraham took seventeen years to reappear. A Oliver Hazard Perry-class Guided Missile frigate, this time, launched in 1988 and was retired in 2014.

The story was later told during 1975 through Reagan's Radio show. More information about that can be found at ''[[London2|London 2]].''

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:USS_Ingraham|USS Ingraham]]

USS Ingraham

2026-08-31T18:34:02Z

Reagan admin:

USS Ingraham is a name given to various United States Naval ships throughout history. The ships were named for Captain Duncan Ingraham who stood against 3 Austro-Hungarian ships in defense of Martin [[Koszta]]. Martin had emigrated to America and started the process of becoming a citizen, but was captured during a trip to Turkey. Ingraham received the Congressional Gold metal for his actions.

== Speech Relevance ==
From '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<blockquote>Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.</blockquote>
At the time of this speech, there had been 3 ships to bear the name of USS Ingraham. All were Destroyers. The US Navy never went more than five years without an Ingraham in service.
* The first was in service from 1918 until 1936.
* The second from 1941 until 1942, sinking in a collision.
* The third ship was built almost immediately and went into service in 1944. It served the US Navy until 1971 (participating in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War), when it was sold to Greece. There, it was in service for another 21 years, until 1992.

The fourth USS Ingraham took seventeen years to reappear. A Oliver Hazard Perry-class Guided Missile frigate, this time, launched in 1988 and was retired in 2014.

The story was later told during 1975 through Reagan's Radio show. More information about that can be found at ''[[London2|London 2]].''

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:USS_Ingraham|USS Ingraham]]

USS Ingraham

2026-08-31T18:30:04Z

Reagan admin:

USS Ingraham is a name given to various United States Naval ships throughout history. The ships were named for Captain Duncan Ingraham who stood against 3 Austro-Hungarian ships in defense of Martin [[Koszta]]. Martin had emigrated to America and started the process of becoming a citizen, but was captured during a trip to Turkey. Ingraham received the Congressional Gold metal for his actions.

== Speech Relevance ==
From '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<blockquote>Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.</blockquote>
At the time of this speech, there had been 3 ships to bear the name of USS Ingraham. All were Destroyers. The US Navy never went more than five years without an Ingraham in service.
The first was in service from 1918 until 1936.
The second from 1941 until 1942, sinking in a collision.
The third ship was built almost immediately and went into service in 1944. It served the US Navy until 1971 (participating in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War), when it was sold to Greece. There, it was in service for another 21 years, until 1992.

The fourth USS Ingraham took seventeen years to reappear. A Oliver Hazard Perry-class Guided Missile frigate, this time, launched in 1988 and was retired in 2014.

The story was later told during 1975 through Reagan's Radio show. More information about that can be found at ''[[London2|London 2]].''

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:USS_Ingraham|USS Ingraham]]

John Dalberg-Acton

2026-08-31T17:59:03Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
John Dalberg-Acton was an English Baron of the 19th century and an admirer of the American system of federal government. A British [[liberalism|liberal]] (not to be confused with an American [[liberalism|liberal]]).

== Speech Relevance ==
Lord Acton is mentioned in Reagan's first CPAC speech, '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<blockquote>Lord Acton of England, who once said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," would say of that document, "They had solved with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom." Never in any society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority.</blockquote>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton|John_Dalberg-Acton]]

A City Upon a Hill

2026-08-31T17:52:04Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Speeches]]
== Audio ==
[https://catalog.archives.gov/id/169489077 Available through the National Archives] (Audio includes introductory speeches)

==Transcript==
Thank you.

Thank you very much. you please.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Please.

Thank you. Well, thank you all very much for a very heartwarming welcome and Buzz, I thank you for your very generous words. Reverend, clergy, [[wikipedia:Meldrim_Thomson_Jr.|Governor Thompson]], [[wikipedia:Dave_Treen|Congressman Treen]], our toastmaster [[wikipedia:William_A._Rusher|Bill Rusher]], the other distinguished guests here at the table. Any speaker, in these first few seconds on his feet is always questioning what should be the first thing of the opening remark, the audience catcher so to speak, but Bill Rusher and [[wikipedia:Donald_%22Buz%22_Lukens|Buzz Lukens]] have set the pace for me, I might as well get back in the act and introduce someone myself. As a matter of fact, there are two men here tonight I'm very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many, many years when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines bringing back men who had lived with honor for miserable years in the prison camps of Vietnam and two of those men are here tonight, [[wikipedia:John_McCain|John McCain]] and [[wikipedia:William_P._Lawrence|Bill Lawrence]].

[Applause]

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I can add another one! [[wikipedia:Edward_H._Martin|Ed Martin]], right here to join that wonderful crew.

Thank you.

Ed, I'm sorry!

Well, I might as well sit down I can't do any better than that in the remainder of the evening. Well you know to be here, this is a spot to know that I am midway in the seminars that you've been holding. The idea of what subject, knowing the audience I would be addressing and not knowing which of those subjects you have explored thoroughly already in your seminars or which are on the schedule for your... the rest of your meetings leaves me hard put to find a subject and it isn't helped any but the fact that every once in a while I have when I needed material, cribbed from [[wikipedia:M._Stanton_Evans|M. Stanton Evans]] and he's sitting here tonight, so I can't even do that.

I think the only story that would describe my situation is one that I've told as some of you, I know, before, but then you have to remember that if life begins at 40 so does lumbago, arthritis and the tendency to tell stories three or four times. It was a fellow in the picture business who aspired to an operatic career, saved his money so he could go to Italy and study for opera, and after a few years of study there he was invited to sing at [[wikipedia:La_Scala|La Scala]], the very spiritual fountainhead of opera. They were doing [[wikipedia:Pagliacci|Pagliacci]] and he sang the beautiful aria [[wikipedia:Vesti_la_giubba|Vesti la Giubba]] and the applause was so thunderous and so sustained that they couldn't continue the opera until he repeated Vesti la Giubba as an encore and again the same sustained thunderous applause and again he stepped center stage and sang the aria. This went on till finally he motioned for quiet and he tried to tell them how full his heart was and what this welcome in his first appearance in opera, in that almost sacred place meant to him. but 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 says, "You'll do it till you get it right."

You know, Reverend, I think I ought to tell you that when we were coming east here we ran into some weather. We were circling up there on the fog and being vectored into a landing pattern and things were getting a little hairy and a little bumpy and there was a clergyman on board and Nancy turned to him across the aisle and said, "Can't you do something about this?" and he said, "I'm with sales not management."

Just a couple of nights ago, Nancy and I had the great pleasure of being up in New Hampshire, in Governor Mel Thompson's state, and I heard a wonderful story there about full of political philosophy and all. A quite elderly little lady left her doctor's office one day and hurried directly down the street to the registrar of voters, went in, and said, "I want to re-register democrat." This man in that little town had known her all his life said, "How can you do that? You've been a Republican all your life. Your parents were Republicans. Your Grandparents were Republicans." She said, "I know, I've just left the doctor's office and he told me my days were numbered, and if I've got to go I'd rather it was one of them than one of us."

Well it is an honor to be here tonight I'm proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company. Not too long ago Nancy and I also on the way to the governor's conference found ourselves as honored guests at the football game between Ole Miss and Tennessee. Ole Miss hadn't had that good a season, Tennessee was supposed to clobber them. Midway in the third quarter, it was pretty apparent that [https://collegefootballcrazy.com/the-jackson-massacre-1969/ Ole Miss was pulling the upset of the season] and was going to win and we heard a voice in the stands behind to say, "Man, if they'll play that way for him what would they have done if [[wikipedia:John_Wayne|John Wayne]] was here."

But seriously, there are men here tonight who through their wisdom, their foresight, and their courage have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our time. Years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since [[wikipedia:Barry_Goldwater|Barry Goldwater]] walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living for this generation. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all the great ideals and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded us. But louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches and, oh, Congressman Dave Treen, what words of wisdom you gave us here in what our attitude must be it is so easy to fall into the trap of standing on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump off, with the flag flying and go down arguing. How much better it is if we turn persuasive and leave the strident voices to the others on the other side. We are the ones who can do the persuasive job that has to be done. Cartoonists with acid tip pen portray some of the reminders of our heritage, I know, and our destiny is old-fashioned. They say that we're trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed, by them, as taking the country back to [[wikipedia:William_McKinley|McKinley]]. Which I've never found that was so bad under McKinley— under McKinley, we freed [[Cuba]].

But on the span of history we're still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we're the oldest continuing republic in the world. And so I thought that perhaps tonight, rather than talking on the subjects we're trying to find something new to say about the very things that you're discussing, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage. Now you can call it mysticism if you want to but I've always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage. Now this was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, but it was also true and is true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic but our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, he happened to be an avid student of history, [[The_Speech_of_the_Unknown|told me a story and it happened to be a story about that little day, or, that day in the little hall in Philadelphia]] where honorable men hard-pressed by a king who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess I've never researched or made an effort to verify it, perhaps it's only legend, but story or legend, he described the atmosphere the strain the debate and that— that grew heated as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act. The walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price, the gallows and the headsman's axe, and as the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He was not a young man he was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment he said,

<BLOCKQUOTE>''"Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines — freedom."'' And he added, ''"If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever."''</BLOCKQUOTE>

And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well as I say whether story or legend the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was in itself miracle enough. 56 men, a little band so unique we've never seen their likes since, pledged their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor. 16 gave their lives most gave their fortunes, all of them preserved their sacred honor. And what manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers of— in the heroic mold. 24 were lawyers and jurists. 11 were merchants and tradesmen. 9 were farmers. They were men who had achieved security but who valued freedom more. And what price did they pay? [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|John Hart]] was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart — but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Carter Braxton]] of Virginia lost all his ships — they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Ellery]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Clymer]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Hall]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Walton]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Gwinnett]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Rutledge]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Morris]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Livingston]], and [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Middleton]]. [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Nelson]], learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home — he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep — all done without an area re-development plan or urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we're a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines from every corner of the world and we have shed that American melting pot blood in every corner of the world usually in the defense of someone's freedom. But those who remained of that remarkable band we call our founding fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man's history that didn't just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution, the culmination of men's dreams for six thousand years and they formalized those dreams with the Constitution and that too was something of a miracle. Probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. Oh, I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees as our own constitution and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say government grants you these rights and our says you are born with these rights. They are yours by grace of god and no government on earth can take them from you.

[[John_Dalberg-Acton|Lord Acton of England]], that same Lord Acton who said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" would say of that document— its authors, "They had solved with astonishing ease and unexampled success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom." Never as any society had the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority. In less than twenty years we would go to war because of the God-given rights of American sailors as defined in the Constitution that were being violated by a foreign power. We serve notice then in the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. but still in an older cynical world they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up. But in the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He'd been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he had fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, [[Martin Koszta|Koszta]] by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day business took him to a Mediterranean port, there was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. His man servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he'd heard. It was on a small American war sloop. He went aboard, he told Captain Ingraham of that American war sloop his story. Ingraham went to the American consul. When the American consul learned that Koszta had only taken out his first papers, he washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, "I am the senior officer in this port. I believe under my oath of office, I owe this man the protection of our flag." He went aboard the Austrian warship he demanded to see our pris— their prisoner, our citizen. The admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck, he was in chains, he'd been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, "I can hear him better without those chains." And the chains were struck. He walked over and he said to Koszta, "I will ask you one question. Consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?" and Koszta nodded dumbly, yes. And he said, "You shall have it." He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day, three more Austrian ships sailed into the harbor. It looked as if the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flagship to tell the admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force, and he said, "I will expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock this afternoon." As the hour, neared they were looking at each other through the glasses. As it struck four, he had them roll the cannons into the ports, he had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons. One little sloop, and suddenly the lookout called down and said, "They're lowering a boat," and they rowed Koszta over to the little American ship and Captain Ingraham went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. He said, "I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country, I resign." His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words, "This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our nation's history." Now I haven't told that story—incidentally there is to this day and I hope there always will be a [[USS Ingraham]] in the United States Navy.

I didn't tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility. In recent years we've been treated to a rash of noble sounding phrases, some of them sound good but they don't hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts. "The greatest good for the greatest number." Henry Taylor described that as having three things in common with an oil well: "It keeps— it keeps on producing something, it stinks unbelievably, and nobody knows that source's potential."

Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority. [[Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes]] reminded us that, "catchwords can obscure truth for countless years." We're not a warlike people nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. We fought wars with citizen soldiers and volunteer dollar a year men. We haven't casually declared that men are expendable to improve some fancied political position. but in the last decade or two, the greatest good philosophy has prevailed far more than it should. The USS Ingraham has been riding rather low in the water. These same strident voices would have us believe that the uniform itself is the cause, not the result of war. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we as a nation pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

I realized that such a pronouncement of course would possibly belay one open to the charge of warmongering but that would be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price for freedom and fought harder for freedom than any generation that ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible and all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time, we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/679-war-is-an-ugly-thing-but-not-the-ugliest-of John Stuart Mill], when he said that, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. ... A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

But widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have only recently or are presently still receiving an education, I am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this century capitalism and the free enterprise system on under assault. Privately owned business is blamed for despoiling the environment, exploiting the worker and seducing if not outright raping the customer. Those who make the charge have the solution of course, government regulation and control. They never get around to explaining how citizens who are so gullible that they can be suckered into buying breakfast cereal or soap that they don't need and it wouldn't be good for them can at the very same time be astute enough to choose representatives in government in which they would entrust the running of their lives.

Not too long ago a poll was taken on some 2500 college campuses in this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained. Overwhelmingly the students in percentages of 65 and 70 and 75 percent found business responsible, as I said before, for the things that are wrong in this country. And that same number said that government was the solution, to take over the management and the control of private business and then 80 percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep his paws out of their private lives.

We're told every day that the assembly line worker is becoming a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization. well there isn't a socialist country in the world that wouldn't give its copy of [[Karl Marx]] for our standardization. Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line means more leisure for the worker and freedom from back-breaking and mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx didn't abolish child labor or free the women from working in the mines, the coal mines in England, the steam engine and modern machinery did that. Unfortunately the disciples of the new order have had a hand in determining too much policy in recent decades. And government has grown in size and power and cost through the [[New Deal]], the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the [[Great Society]]. It costs more for government today than the family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. As an [https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/bata/bata05.htm|old rabbi] said, if all the seas were ink and all the reeds were pens and all the skies were parchment and all men could write, this would not suffice to write down all the red tape of this government. Not even...

[Applause]

Not even the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions, bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government. But the Federal Registry listing their regulations is just a few pages short of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica. one of those regulations caught up with a businessman in California. He was told that he had to have separate employees men— washrooms— men's and women's washrooms. He only has one employee and she's his wife and at home they sleep in the same bed and use the same bathroom. During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government. There were eight cabinet departments and twelve independent agencies to administer the federal health programs. There were thirty-five housing programs and twenty transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with twenty-seven different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations in nine departments with a thousand projects having to do in the field of pollution. One congressman found the federal government was spending four billion dollars on research in its own laboratories but didn't know where they were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One of the research projects was the [https://worlddatabaseofhappiness-archive.eur.nl/hap_bib/freetexts/matlin_n_1966.pdf Demography of Happiness] and for two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars we learned that people who make more money are happier than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick. Now for 15 cents they could have bought an almanac and read the old bromide, It's better to be rich, young and healthy than poor, old and sick.

Now, I haven't told you all of this to make you unhappy or discouraged. As a matter of fact, I feel quite the reverse. You know government extravagance is probably the only bright spot we have. Can you imagine how miserable we'd all be if we were getting all the government we're paying for?

Those who've lost faith in free enterprise frequently cite the joys of living in countries where government has assumed the ultimate control. Countries where everything that isn't prohibited is compulsory. A look at the efficiency with which one iron curtain satellite solved a holiday problem just a couple of years ago. It issued the following edict: they said because Christmas Eve falls on a Thursday, Thursday has been designated a Saturday for work purposes. Factories will close all day with stores open a half a day only. Friday, December 25th has been designated a Sunday with both factories and stores closed all day. Monday will be a Wednesday for work purposes. Wednesday will be a business Friday, Saturday will be a Sunday, and Sunday will be Monday.

But do not falter in the course that you've chosen for you are far more in tune with the hopes and aspirations of our people and are those who would sacrifice freedom for some fancied security.

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, "We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.

When I was born my life expectancy was ten years less than I've already lived. that's a cause of regret to some people in California, I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is considered the poverty line today. Three-quarters lived in what is considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than ten percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. For the young people who are here tonight I doubt if they know some of the names of diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals than any nation in the world.

When I was your age, believe it or not, some of us didn't even know, in fact none of us knew, that we even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sports announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn't have a Hank Aarons or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spalding Guide said baseball was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned and against all those other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We haven't finished the job, we still have a ways to go, but we've made more progress in a few years than we've had in more than a century.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are getting that higher education in the United States, and our young negro community is going to college in a percentage that is greater than the percentage of whites, in any other country in the world. One half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic, and we have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society ever known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. 95 percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients, and a part of the five percent that don't are trying to lose weight. 99 precent have gas or electric refrigeration. 92 percent have TV, an equal number have telephones, there are 120 million cars on our streets and highways and all of them are on the street at once when you try to get home at night. Ah, but isn't this just proof of our materialism, the very thing that we're charged with? Well we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras and opera companies and non-profit theaters and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together. And somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist.

We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon or who now circle the earth above us in Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through that year, those years of torture in captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land, as the founding fathers were typical. We found them on the streets, in the offices and the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall in Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and a return to the Dark Ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish action. Into the hands of America god has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind." We are indeed and we are today the last best hope of man on earth.

Thank you.

A City Upon a Hill

2026-08-31T17:38:24Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Speeches]]
== Audio ==
[https://catalog.archives.gov/id/169489077 Available through the National Archives] (Audio includes introductory speeches)

==Transcript==
Thank you.

Thank you very much. you please.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Please.

Thank you. Well, thank you all very much for a very heartwarming welcome and Buzz, I thank you for your very generous words. Reverend, clergy, [[wikipedia:Meldrim_Thomson_Jr.|Governor Thompson]], [[wikipedia:Dave_Treen|Congressman Treen]], our toastmaster [[wikipedia:William_A._Rusher|Bill Rusher]], the other distinguished guests here at the table. Any speaker, in these first few seconds on his feet is always questioning what should be the first thing of the opening remark, the audience catcher so to speak, but Bill Rusher and [[wikipedia:Donald_%22Buz%22_Lukens|Buzz Lukens]] have set the pace for me, I might as well get back in the act and introduce someone myself. As a matter of fact, there are two men here tonight I'm very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many, many years when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines bringing back men who had lived with honor for miserable years in the prison camps of Vietnam and two of those men are here tonight, [[wikipedia:John_McCain|John McCain]] and [[wikipedia:William_P._Lawrence|Bill Lawrence]].

[Applause]

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I can add another one! [[wikipedia:Edward_H._Martin|Ed Martin]], right here to join that wonderful crew.

Thank you.

Ed, I'm sorry!

Well, I might as well sit down I can't do any better than that in the remainder of the evening. Well you know to be here, this is a spot to know that I am midway in the seminars that you've been holding. The idea of what subject, knowing the audience I would be addressing and not knowing which of those subjects you have explored thoroughly already in your seminars or which are on the schedule for your... the rest of your meetings leaves me hard put to find a subject and it isn't helped any but the fact that every once in a while I have when I needed material, cribbed from [[wikipedia:M._Stanton_Evans|M. Stanton Evans]] and he's sitting here tonight, so I can't even do that.

I think the only story that would describe my situation is one that I've told as some of you, I know, before, but then you have to remember that if life begins at 40 so does lumbago, arthritis and the tendency to tell stories three or four times. It was a fellow in the picture business who aspired to an operatic career, saved his money so he could go to Italy and study for opera, and after a few years of study there he was invited to sing at [[wikipedia:La_Scala|La Scala]], the very spiritual fountainhead of opera. They were doing [[wikipedia:Pagliacci|Pagliacci]] and he sang the beautiful aria [[wikipedia:Vesti_la_giubba|Vesti la Giubba]] and the applause was so thunderous and so sustained that they couldn't continue the opera until he repeated Vesti la Giubba as an encore and again the same sustained thunderous applause and again he stepped center stage and sang the aria. This went on till finally he motioned for quiet and he tried to tell them how full his heart was and what this welcome in his first appearance in opera, in that almost sacred place meant to him. but 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 says, "You'll do it till you get it right."

You know, Reverend, I think I ought to tell you that when we were coming east here we ran into some weather. We were circling up there on the fog and being vectored into a landing pattern and things were getting a little hairy and a little bumpy and there was a clergyman on board and Nancy turned to him across the aisle and said, "Can't you do something about this?" and he said, "I'm with sales not management."

Just a couple of nights ago, Nancy and I had the great pleasure of being up in New Hampshire, in Governor Mel Thompson's state, and I heard a wonderful story there about full of political philosophy and all. A quite elderly little lady left her doctor's office one day and hurried directly down the street to the registrar of voters, went in, and said, "I want to re-register democrat." This man in that little town had known her all his life said, "How can you do that? You've been a Republican all your life. Your parents were Republicans. Your Grandparents were Republicans." She said, "I know, I've just left the doctor's office and he told me my days were numbered, and if I've got to go I'd rather it was one of them than one of us."

Well it is an honor to be here tonight I'm proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company. Not too long ago Nancy and I also on the way to the governor's conference found ourselves as honored guests at the football game between Ole Miss and Tennessee. Ole Miss hadn't had that good a season, Tennessee was supposed to clobber them. Midway in the third quarter, it was pretty apparent that [https://collegefootballcrazy.com/the-jackson-massacre-1969/ Ole Miss was pulling the upset of the season] and was going to win and we heard a voice in the stands behind to say, "Man, if they'll play that way for him what would they have done if [[wikipedia:John_Wayne|John Wayne]] was here."

But seriously, there are men here tonight who through their wisdom, their foresight, and their courage have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our time. Years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since [[wikipedia:Barry_Goldwater|Barry Goldwater]] walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living for this generation. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all the great ideals and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded us. But louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches and, oh, Congressman Dave Treen, what words of wisdom you gave us here in what our attitude must be it is so easy to fall into the trap of standing on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump off, with the flag flying and go down arguing. How much better it is if we turn persuasive and leave the strident voices to the others on the other side. We are the ones who can do the persuasive job that has to be done. Cartoonists with acid tip pen portray some of the reminders of our heritage, I know, and our destiny is old-fashioned. They say that we're trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed, by them, as taking the country back to [[wikipedia:William_McKinley|McKinley]]. Which I've never found that was so bad under McKinley— under McKinley, we freed [[Cuba]].

But on the span of history we're still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we're the oldest continuing republic in the world. And so I thought that perhaps tonight, rather than talking on the subjects we're trying to find something new to say about the very things that you're discussing, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage. Now you can call it mysticism if you want to but I've always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage. Now this was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, but it was also true and is true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic but our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, he happened to be an avid student of history, [[The_Speech_of_the_Unknown|told me a story and it happened to be a story about that little day, or, that day in the little hall in Philadelphia]] where honorable men hard-pressed by a king who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess I've never researched or made an effort to verify it, perhaps it's only legend, but story or legend, he described the atmosphere the strain the debate and that— that grew heated as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act. The walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price, the gallows and the headsman's axe, and as the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He was not a young man he was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment he said,

<BLOCKQUOTE>''"Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines — freedom."'' And he added, ''"If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever."''</BLOCKQUOTE>

And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well as I say whether story or legend the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was in itself miracle enough. 56 men, a little band so unique we've never seen their likes since, pledged their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor. 16 gave their lives most gave their fortunes, all of them preserved their sacred honor. And what manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers of— in the heroic mold. 24 were lawyers and jurists. 11 were merchants and tradesmen. 9 were farmers. They were men who had achieved security but who valued freedom more. And what price did they pay? [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|John Hart]] was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart — but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Carter Braxton]] of Virginia lost all his ships — they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Ellery]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Clymer]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Hall]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Walton]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Gwinnett]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Rutledge]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Morris]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Livingston]], and [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Middleton]]. [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Nelson]], learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home — he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep — all done without an area re-development plan or urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we're a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines from every corner of the world and we have shed that American melting pot blood in every corner of the world usually in the defense of someone's freedom. But those who remained of that remarkable band we call our founding fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man's history that didn't just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution, the culmination of men's dreams for six thousand years and they formalized those dreams with the Constitution and that too was something of a miracle. Probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. Oh, I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees as our own constitution and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say government grants you these rights and our says you are born with these rights. They are yours by grace of god and no government on earth can take them from you.

Lord Acton of England, that same Lord Acton who said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" would say of that document— its authors, "They had solved with astonishing ease and unexampled success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom." Never as any society had the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority. In less than twenty years we would go to war because of the God-given rights of American sailors as defined in the Constitution that were being violated by a foreign power. We serve notice then in the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. but still in an older cynical world they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up. But in the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He'd been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he had fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, [[Martin Koszta|Koszta]] by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day business took him to a Mediterranean port, there was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. His man servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he'd heard. It was on a small American war sloop. He went aboard, he told Captain Ingraham of that American war sloop his story. Ingraham went to the American consul. When the American consul learned that Koszta had only taken out his first papers, he washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, "I am the senior officer in this port. I believe under my oath of office, I owe this man the protection of our flag." He went aboard the Austrian warship he demanded to see our pris— their prisoner, our citizen. The admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck, he was in chains, he'd been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, "I can hear him better without those chains." And the chains were struck. He walked over and he said to Koszta, "I will ask you one question. Consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?" and Koszta nodded dumbly, yes. And he said, "You shall have it." He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day, three more Austrian ships sailed into the harbor. It looked as if the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flagship to tell the admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force, and he said, "I will expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock this afternoon." As the hour, neared they were looking at each other through the glasses. As it struck four, he had them roll the cannons into the ports, he had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons. One little sloop, and suddenly the lookout called down and said, "They're lowering a boat," and they rowed Koszta over to the little American ship and Captain Ingraham went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. He said, "I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country, I resign." His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words, "This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our nation's history." Now I haven't told that story—incidentally there is to this day and I hope there always will be a [[USS Ingraham]] in the United States Navy.

I didn't tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility. In recent years we've been treated to a rash of noble sounding phrases, some of them sound good but they don't hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts. "The greatest good for the greatest number." Henry Taylor described that as having three things in common with an oil well: "It keeps— it keeps on producing something, it stinks unbelievably, and nobody knows that source's potential."

Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority. [[Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes]] reminded us that, "catchwords can obscure truth for countless years." We're not a warlike people nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. We fought wars with citizen soldiers and volunteer dollar a year men. We haven't casually declared that men are expendable to improve some fancied political position. but in the last decade or two, the greatest good philosophy has prevailed far more than it should. The USS Ingraham has been riding rather low in the water. These same strident voices would have us believe that the uniform itself is the cause, not the result of war. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we as a nation pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

I realized that such a pronouncement of course would possibly belay one open to the charge of warmongering but that would be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price for freedom and fought harder for freedom than any generation that ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible and all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time, we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/679-war-is-an-ugly-thing-but-not-the-ugliest-of John Stuart Mill], when he said that, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. ... A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

But widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have only recently or are presently still receiving an education, I am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this century capitalism and the free enterprise system on under assault. Privately owned business is blamed for despoiling the environment, exploiting the worker and seducing if not outright raping the customer. Those who make the charge have the solution of course, government regulation and control. They never get around to explaining how citizens who are so gullible that they can be suckered into buying breakfast cereal or soap that they don't need and it wouldn't be good for them can at the very same time be astute enough to choose representatives in government in which they would entrust the running of their lives.

Not too long ago a poll was taken on some 2500 college campuses in this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained. Overwhelmingly the students in percentages of 65 and 70 and 75 percent found business responsible, as I said before, for the things that are wrong in this country. And that same number said that government was the solution, to take over the management and the control of private business and then 80 percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep his paws out of their private lives.

We're told every day that the assembly line worker is becoming a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization. well there isn't a socialist country in the world that wouldn't give its copy of [[Karl Marx]] for our standardization. Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line means more leisure for the worker and freedom from back-breaking and mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx didn't abolish child labor or free the women from working in the mines, the coal mines in England, the steam engine and modern machinery did that. Unfortunately the disciples of the new order have had a hand in determining too much policy in recent decades. And government has grown in size and power and cost through the [[New Deal]], the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the [[Great Society]]. It costs more for government today than the family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. As an [https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/bata/bata05.htm|old rabbi] said, if all the seas were ink and all the reeds were pens and all the skies were parchment and all men could write, this would not suffice to write down all the red tape of this government. Not even...

[Applause]

Not even the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions, bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government. But the Federal Registry listing their regulations is just a few pages short of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica. one of those regulations caught up with a businessman in California. He was told that he had to have separate employees men— washrooms— men's and women's washrooms. He only has one employee and she's his wife and at home they sleep in the same bed and use the same bathroom. During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government. There were eight cabinet departments and twelve independent agencies to administer the federal health programs. There were thirty-five housing programs and twenty transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with twenty-seven different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations in nine departments with a thousand projects having to do in the field of pollution. One congressman found the federal government was spending four billion dollars on research in its own laboratories but didn't know where they were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One of the research projects was the [https://worlddatabaseofhappiness-archive.eur.nl/hap_bib/freetexts/matlin_n_1966.pdf Demography of Happiness] and for two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars we learned that people who make more money are happier than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick. Now for 15 cents they could have bought an almanac and read the old bromide, It's better to be rich, young and healthy than poor, old and sick.

Now, I haven't told you all of this to make you unhappy or discouraged. As a matter of fact, I feel quite the reverse. You know government extravagance is probably the only bright spot we have. Can you imagine how miserable we'd all be if we were getting all the government we're paying for?

Those who've lost faith in free enterprise frequently cite the joys of living in countries where government has assumed the ultimate control. Countries where everything that isn't prohibited is compulsory. A look at the efficiency with which one iron curtain satellite solved a holiday problem just a couple of years ago. It issued the following edict: they said because Christmas Eve falls on a Thursday, Thursday has been designated a Saturday for work purposes. Factories will close all day with stores open a half a day only. Friday, December 25th has been designated a Sunday with both factories and stores closed all day. Monday will be a Wednesday for work purposes. Wednesday will be a business Friday, Saturday will be a Sunday, and Sunday will be Monday.

But do not falter in the course that you've chosen for you are far more in tune with the hopes and aspirations of our people and are those who would sacrifice freedom for some fancied security.

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, "We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.

When I was born my life expectancy was ten years less than I've already lived. that's a cause of regret to some people in California, I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is considered the poverty line today. Three-quarters lived in what is considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than ten percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. For the young people who are here tonight I doubt if they know some of the names of diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals than any nation in the world.

When I was your age, believe it or not, some of us didn't even know, in fact none of us knew, that we even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sports announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn't have a Hank Aarons or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spalding Guide said baseball was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned and against all those other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We haven't finished the job, we still have a ways to go, but we've made more progress in a few years than we've had in more than a century.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are getting that higher education in the United States, and our young negro community is going to college in a percentage that is greater than the percentage of whites, in any other country in the world. One half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic, and we have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society ever known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. 95 percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients, and a part of the five percent that don't are trying to lose weight. 99 precent have gas or electric refrigeration. 92 percent have TV, an equal number have telephones, there are 120 million cars on our streets and highways and all of them are on the street at once when you try to get home at night. Ah, but isn't this just proof of our materialism, the very thing that we're charged with? Well we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras and opera companies and non-profit theaters and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together. And somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist.

We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon or who now circle the earth above us in Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through that year, those years of torture in captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land, as the founding fathers were typical. We found them on the streets, in the offices and the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall in Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and a return to the Dark Ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish action. Into the hands of America god has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind." We are indeed and we are today the last best hope of man on earth.

Thank you.

A City Upon a Hill

2026-08-31T15:08:14Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Speeches]]
== Audio ==
[https://catalog.archives.gov/id/169489077 Available through the National Archives] (Audio includes introductory speeches)

==Transcript==
Thank you.

Thank you very much. you please.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Please.

Thank you. Well, thank you all very much for a very heartwarming welcome and Buzz, I thank you for your very generous words. Reverend, clergy, [[wikipedia:Meldrim_Thomson_Jr.|Governor Thompson]], [[wikipedia:Dave_Treen|Congressman Treen]], our toastmaster [[wikipedia:William_A._Rusher|Bill Rusher]], the other distinguished guests here at the table. Any speaker, in these first few seconds on his feet is always questioning what should be the first thing of the opening remark, the audience catcher so to speak, but Bill Rusher and [[wikipedia:Donald_%22Buz%22_Lukens|Buzz Lukens]] have set the pace for me, I might as well get back in the act and introduce someone myself. As a matter of fact, there are two men here tonight I'm very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many, many years when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines bringing back men who had lived with honor for miserable years in the prison camps of Vietnam and two of those men are here tonight, [[wikipedia:John_McCain|John McCain]] and [[wikipedia:William_P._Lawrence|Bill Lawrence]].

[Applause]

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I can add another one! [[wikipedia:Edward_H._Martin|Ed Martin]], right here to join that wonderful crew.

Thank you.

Ed, I'm sorry!

Well, I might as well sit down I can't do any better than that in the remainder of the evening. Well you know to be here, this is a spot to know that I am midway in the seminars that you've been holding. The idea of what subject, knowing the audience I would be addressing and not knowing which of those subjects you have explored thoroughly already in your seminars or which are on the schedule for your... the rest of your meetings leaves me hard put to find a subject and it isn't helped any but the fact that every once in a while I have when I needed material, cribbed from [[wikipedia:M._Stanton_Evans|M. Stanton Evans]] and he's sitting here tonight, so I can't even do that.

I think the only story that would describe my situation is one that I've told as some of you, I know, before, but then you have to remember that if life begins at 40 so does lumbago, arthritis and the tendency to tell stories three or four times. It was a fellow in the picture business who aspired to an operatic career, saved his money so he could go to Italy and study for opera, and after a few years of study there he was invited to sing at [[wikipedia:La_Scala|La Scala]], the very spiritual fountainhead of opera. They were doing [[wikipedia:Pagliacci|Pagliacci]] and he sang the beautiful aria [[wikipedia:Vesti_la_giubba|Vesti la Giubba]] and the applause was so thunderous and so sustained that they couldn't continue the opera until he repeated Vesti la Giubba as an encore and again the same sustained thunderous applause and again he stepped center stage and sang the aria. This went on till finally he motioned for quiet and he tried to tell them how full his heart was and what this welcome in his first appearance in opera, in that almost sacred place meant to him. but 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 says, "You'll do it till you get it right."

You know, Reverend, I think I ought to tell you that when we were coming east here we ran into some weather. We were circling up there on the fog and being vectored into a landing pattern and things were getting a little hairy and a little bumpy and there was a clergyman on board and Nancy turned to him across the aisle and said, "Can't you do something about this?" and he said, "I'm with sales not management."

Just a couple of nights ago, Nancy and I had the great pleasure of being up in New Hampshire, in Governor Mel Thompson's state, and I heard a wonderful story there about full of political philosophy and all. A quite elderly little lady left her doctor's office one day and hurried directly down the street to the registrar of voters, went in, and said, "I want to re-register democrat." This man in that little town had known her all his life said, "How can you do that? You've been a Republican all your life. Your parents were Republicans. Your Grandparents were Republicans." She said, "I know, I've just left the doctor's office and he told me my days were numbered, and if I've got to go I'd rather it was one of them than one of us."

Well it is an honor to be here tonight I'm proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company. Not too long ago Nancy and I also on the way to the governor's conference found ourselves as honored guests at the football game between Ole Miss and Tennessee. Ole Miss hadn't had that good a season, Tennessee was supposed to clobber them. Midway in the third quarter, it was pretty apparent that [https://collegefootballcrazy.com/the-jackson-massacre-1969/ Ole Miss was pulling the upset of the season] and was going to win and we heard a voice in the stands behind to say, "Man, if they'll play that way for him what would they have done if [[wikipedia:John_Wayne|John Wayne]] was here."

But seriously, there are men here tonight who through their wisdom, their foresight, and their courage have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our time. Years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since [[wikipedia:Barry_Goldwater|Barry Goldwater]] walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can't go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living for this generation. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all the great ideals and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded us. But louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches and, oh, Congressman Dave Treen, what words of wisdom you gave us here in what our attitude must be it is so easy to fall into the trap of standing on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump off, with the flag flying and go down arguing. How much better it is if we turn persuasive and leave the strident voices to the others on the other side. We are the ones who can do the persuasive job that has to be done. Cartoonists with acid tip pen portray some of the reminders of our heritage, I know, and our destiny is old-fashioned. They say that we're trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed, by them, as taking the country back to McKinley. Which I've never found that was so bad under McKinley— under McKinley, we freed Cuba.

But on the span of history we're still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we're the oldest continuing republic in the world. And so I thought that perhaps tonight, rather than talking on the subjects we're trying to find something new to say about the very things that you're discussing, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage. Now you can call it mysticism if you want to but I've always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage. Now this was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, but it was also true and is true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic but our heritage does set us apart. Some years ago a writer, he happened to be an avid student of history, told me a story and it happened to be a story about that little day, or, that day in the little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men hard-pressed by a king who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess I've never researched or made an effort to verify it, perhaps it's only legend, but story or legend, he described the atmosphere the strain the debate and that— that grew heated as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act. The walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price, the gallows and the headsman's axe, and as the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery he was not a young man he was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment he said,

<BLOCKQUOTE>''"Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines — freedom."'' And he added, ''"If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever."''</BLOCKQUOTE>

And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well as I say whether story or legend the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was in itself miracle enough. 56 men, a little band so unique we've never seen their likes since, pledged their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor. 16 gave their lives most gave their fortunes, all of them preserved their sacred honor. And what manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers of— in the heroic mold. 24 were lawyers and jurists. 11 were merchants and tradesmen. 9 were farmers. They were men who had achieved security but who valued freedom more. And what price did they pay? [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|John Hart]] was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart — but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Carter Braxton]] of Virginia lost all his ships — they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Ellery]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Clymer]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Hall]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Walton]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Gwinnett]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Rutledge]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Morris]], [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Livingston]], and [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Middleton]]. [[Founding Fathers#Named Signers|Nelson]], learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home — he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep — all done without an area re-development plan or urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we're a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes the bloodlines from every corner of the world and we have shed that American melting pot blood in every corner of the world usually in the defense of someone's freedom. But those who remained of that remarkable band we call our founding fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man's history that didn't just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution, the culmination of men's dreams for six thousand years and they formalized those dreams with the Constitution and that too was something of a miracle. Probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. Oh, I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees as our own constitution and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say government grants you these rights and our says you are born with these rights. They are yours by grace of god and no government on earth can take them from you.

Lord Acton of England, that same Lord Acton who said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" would say of that document— its authors, "They had solved with astonishing ease and unexampled success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom." Never as any society had the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority. In less than twenty years we would go to war because of the God-given rights of American sailors as defined in the Constitution that were being violated by a foreign power. We serve notice then in the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. but still in an older cynical world they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up. But in the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He'd been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he had fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, [[Martin Koszta|Koszta]] by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day business took him to a Mediterranean port, there was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. His man servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he'd heard. It was on a small American war sloop. He went aboard, he told Captain Ingraham of that American war sloop his story. Ingraham went to the American consul. When the American consul learned that Koszta had only taken out his first papers, he washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, "I am the senior officer in this port. I believe under my oath of office, I owe this man the protection of our flag." He went aboard the Austrian warship he demanded to see our pris— their prisoner, our citizen. The admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck, he was in chains, he'd been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, "I can hear him better without those chains." And the chains were struck. He walked over and he said to Koszta, "I will ask you one question. Consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?" and Koszta nodded dumbly, yes. And he said, "You shall have it." He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day, three more Austrian ships sailed into the harbor. It looked as if the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flagship to tell the admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force, and he said, "I will expect a satisfactory answer by four o'clock this afternoon." As the hour, neared they were looking at each other through the glasses. As it struck four, he had them roll the cannons into the ports, he had them light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons. One little sloop, and suddenly the lookout called down and said, "They're lowering a boat," and they rowed Koszta over to the little American ship and Captain Ingraham went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. He said, "I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country, I resign." His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words, "This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our nation's history." Now I haven't told that story—incidentally there is to this day and I hope there always will be a [[USS Ingraham]] in the United States Navy.

I didn't tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility. In recent years we've been treated to a rash of noble sounding phrases, some of them sound good but they don't hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts. "The greatest good for the greatest number." Henry Taylor described that as having three things in common with an oil well: "It keeps— it keeps on producing something, it stinks unbelievably, and nobody knows that source's potential."

Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority. [[Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes]] reminded us that, "catchwords can obscure truth for countless years." We're not a warlike people nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. We fought wars with citizen soldiers and volunteer dollar a year men. We haven't casually declared that men are expendable to improve some fancied political position. but in the last decade or two, the greatest good philosophy has prevailed far more than it should. The USS Ingraham has been riding rather low in the water. These same strident voices would have us believe that the uniform itself is the cause, not the result of war. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we as a nation pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

I realized that such a pronouncement of course would possibly belay one open to the charge of warmongering but that would be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price for freedom and fought harder for freedom than any generation that ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible and all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time, we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/679-war-is-an-ugly-thing-but-not-the-ugliest-of John Stuart Mill], when he said that, "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. ... A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

But widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have only recently or are presently still receiving an education, I am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this century capitalism and the free enterprise system on under assault. Privately owned business is blamed for despoiling the environment, exploiting the worker and seducing if not outright raping the customer. Those who make the charge have the solution of course, government regulation and control. They never get around to explaining how citizens who are so gullible that they can be suckered into buying breakfast cereal or soap that they don't need and it wouldn't be good for them can at the very same time be astute enough to choose representatives in government in which they would entrust the running of their lives.

Not too long ago a poll was taken on some 2500 college campuses in this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained. Overwhelmingly the students in percentages of 65 and 70 and 75 percent found business responsible, as I said before, for the things that are wrong in this country. And that same number said that government was the solution, to take over the management and the control of private business and then 80 percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep his paws out of their private lives.

We're told every day that the assembly line worker is becoming a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization. well there isn't a socialist country in the world that wouldn't give its copy of [[Karl Marx]] for our standardization. Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line means more leisure for the worker and freedom from back-breaking and mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx didn't abolish child labor or free the women from working in the mines, the coal mines in England, the steam engine and modern machinery did that. Unfortunately the disciples of the new order have had a hand in determining too much policy in recent decades. And government has grown in size and power and cost through the [[New Deal]], the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the [[Great Society]]. It costs more for government today than the family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. As an [https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/bata/bata05.htm|old rabbi] said, if all the seas were ink and all the reeds were pens and all the skies were parchment and all men could write, this would not suffice to write down all the red tape of this government. Not even...

[Applause]

Not even the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions, bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government. But the Federal Registry listing their regulations is just a few pages short of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica. one of those regulations caught up with a businessman in California. He was told that he had to have separate employees men— washrooms— men's and women's washrooms. He only has one employee and she's his wife and at home they sleep in the same bed and use the same bathroom. During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government. There were eight cabinet departments and twelve independent agencies to administer the federal health programs. There were thirty-five housing programs and twenty transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with twenty-seven different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations in nine departments with a thousand projects having to do in the field of pollution. One congressman found the federal government was spending four billion dollars on research in its own laboratories but didn't know where they were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One of the research projects was the [https://worlddatabaseofhappiness-archive.eur.nl/hap_bib/freetexts/matlin_n_1966.pdf Demography of Happiness] and for two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars we learned that people who make more money are happier than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick. Now for 15 cents they could have bought an almanac and read the old bromide, It's better to be rich, young and healthy than poor, old and sick.

Now, I haven't told you all of this to make you unhappy or discouraged. As a matter of fact, I feel quite the reverse. You know government extravagance is probably the only bright spot we have. Can you imagine how miserable we'd all be if we were getting all the government we're paying for?

Those who've lost faith in free enterprise frequently cite the joys of living in countries where government has assumed the ultimate control. Countries where everything that isn't prohibited is compulsory. A look at the efficiency with which one iron curtain satellite solved a holiday problem just a couple of years ago. It issued the following edict: they said because Christmas Eve falls on a Thursday, Thursday has been designated a Saturday for work purposes. Factories will close all day with stores open a half a day only. Friday, December 25th has been designated a Sunday with both factories and stores closed all day. Monday will be a Wednesday for work purposes. Wednesday will be a business Friday, Saturday will be a Sunday, and Sunday will be Monday.

But do not falter in the course that you've chosen for you are far more in tune with the hopes and aspirations of our people and are those who would sacrifice freedom for some fancied security.

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, "We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world." Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.

When I was born my life expectancy was ten years less than I've already lived. that's a cause of regret to some people in California, I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is considered the poverty line today. Three-quarters lived in what is considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than ten percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. For the young people who are here tonight I doubt if they know some of the names of diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals than any nation in the world.

When I was your age, believe it or not, some of us didn't even know, in fact none of us knew, that we even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sports announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn't have a Hank Aarons or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spalding Guide said baseball was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned and against all those other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We haven't finished the job, we still have a ways to go, but we've made more progress in a few years than we've had in more than a century.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are getting that higher education in the United States, and our young negro community is going to college in a percentage that is greater than the percentage of whites, in any other country in the world. One half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic, and we have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society ever known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. 95 percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients, and a part of the five percent that don't are trying to lose weight. 99 precent have gas or electric refrigeration. 92 percent have TV, an equal number have telephones, there are 120 million cars on our streets and highways and all of them are on the street at once when you try to get home at night. Ah, but isn't this just proof of our materialism, the very thing that we're charged with? Well we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras and opera companies and non-profit theaters and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together. And somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist.

We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon or who now circle the earth above us in Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through that year, those years of torture in captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land, as the founding fathers were typical. We found them on the streets, in the offices and the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall in Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and a return to the Dark Ages, Pope Pius XII said, "The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish action. Into the hands of America god has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind." We are indeed and we are today the last best hope of man on earth.

Thank you.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

2026-08-28T18:15:40Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]]
[[wikipedia:Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]], appointed by [[wikipedia:Theodore_Roosevelt|Theodore Roosevelt]], served for 30 years, from 1902 until 1935. One of his most well known legal decisions was in the [[wikipedia:Schenck_v._United_States|Schenck v. United States]] case which set certain limitations on the Freedom of Speech, stating that "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." is not protected speech.

== Speech Relevance ==
In '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
There is no evidence Oliver Wendell Holmes ever said this. The book ''They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions'' specifically states that "Keep government poor and remain free." is "misattributed." Holmes did use the expression "strike the jugular" once, in a speech in 1899.

What Holmes did say was:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''One has to try to strike the jugular and let the rest go.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
The point Holmes is making is that one must ignore distractions, focus on one main point and put it across effectively. It has nothing to do with taxes.

Reagan used the "Keep government poor and remain free." portion as late as 1982 at a Fund-raising dinner in Texas. There is no evidence Reagan knew the quote was incorrect. If only transcripts of audio had been available, it is possible the ending quotation marks were simply misplaced. That Reagan was saying to maintain focus on getting tax cuts to force a reduction in spending. However, the prepared edition of Encroaching Control puts the quotation marks in the same place.

In '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us that, "catchwords can obscure truth for countless years." We're not a warlike people nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
This is a completely misattributed quote. It is not from Oliver Wendell Holmes, it came from [[wikipedia:Wendell_Willkie|Wendell Willkie]] (1940 Republican candidate for U.S. President) and the actual quote is: "A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years."

== Source Links ==
[[wikiquote:Oliver_Wendell_Holmes,_Jr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]] ''(WikiQuote)''

Taiwan

2026-08-28T15:59:04Z

Reagan admin:

[[category:places]]
Taiwan is the island where the Republic of China can be found. Before [[World War II]], there was a Chinese Civil War, between Communist (Red) Chinese forces under [[wikipedia:Mao_Zedong|Mao Zedong]] and Nationalist (White) Chinese forces led by [[wikipedia:Chiang Kai-shek|Chiang Kai-shek]]. During World War II, they paused their hostilities to unite against Japan's aggressions. With the conclusion of the war, they returned to their fighting. The Nationalist forces eventually lost in 1949, retreating to [[wikipedia:Taiwan|Taiwan]] and setting up their own government. The Communist government would become the [[wikipedia:China|People's Republic of China]].

==Speech Relevance==
Taiwan would become a frequent topic on Reagan's radio show. In 1979, the Jimmy Carter presidency would officially end the United States recognition of Taiwan/Republic of China in favor of stronger ties with the People's Republic of China.

Labour Party

2026-08-28T15:47:10Z

Reagan admin:

The Labour Party of the United Kingdom is currently one of two main political parties in the British Parliament. The other being the [[wikipedia:Conservative_Party_(UK)|Conservative Party]]. The control of the government (i.e. the [[wikipedia:List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom|Prime Minister position]]) has flipped between these two groups since 1922.

The Labour Party is part of [[wikipedia:Socialist_International|Socialist International]]. In its founding, the Labour Party had ties to the [[wikipedia:Fabian_Society|Fabian Society]].

== Speech Relevance ==
From '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]] down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

During the late-1970s, when Reagan would have been writing and performing his radio show, the UK's Labour Party Prime Minister was [[wikipedia:James_Callaghan|James Callahan]].

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Labour_Party_%28UK%29|Labour Party]]

Labour Party

2026-08-28T15:43:33Z

Reagan admin:

The Labour Party of the United Kingdom is currently one of two main political parties in the British Parliament. The other being the [[wikipedia:Conservative_Party_(UK)|Conservative Party]]. The control of the government (i.e. the [[wikipedia:List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom|Prime Minister position]]) has flipped between these two groups since 1922.

The Labour Party is part of [[wikipedia:Socialist_International|Socialist International]]. In its founding, the Labour Party had ties to the [[wikipedia:Fabian_Society|Fabian Society]].

== Speech Relevance ==
From '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]] down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Labour_Party_%28UK%29|Labour Party]]

Taiwan

2026-08-28T15:32:01Z

Reagan admin: Created page with "category:places Taiwan is the island where the Republic of China can be found. Before World War II, there was a Chinese Civil War, between Communist (Red) Chinese forces under Mao Zedong and Nationalist (White) Chinese forces led by Chang Kai-shek. During World War II, they paused their hostilities to unite against Japan's aggressions. With the conclusion of the war, they returned to their fighting. The Nationalist forces eventually lost in 1949, retreating to Ta..."

[[category:places]]
Taiwan is the island where the Republic of China can be found. Before [[World War II]], there was a Chinese Civil War, between Communist (Red) Chinese forces under Mao Zedong and Nationalist (White) Chinese forces led by Chang Kai-shek. During World War II, they paused their hostilities to unite against Japan's aggressions. With the conclusion of the war, they returned to their fighting. The Nationalist forces eventually lost in 1949, retreating to Taiwan and setting up their own government. The Communist government would become the People's Republic of China.

Taiwan would become a frequent topic on Reagan's radio show. In 1979, the Jimmy Carter presidency would officially end the United States recognition of Taiwan/Republic of China in favor of stronger ties with the People's Republic of China.

China

2026-08-28T15:20:25Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Places]]
The People's Republic of China is the most populated country on Earth, and uses an unusual hybrid economic system. While the country has been [[communism|communist]]/[[socialism|socialist]] since the late 1940s, it has begun to operate under some [[capitalism|capitalist]] principles for financial growth.

China was a frequent discussion point during [[Reagan Radio Commentaries|Reagan's 1975-1979 radio show]], often in relation to the island of [[Taiwan]] and it's Republic of China government.

== Speech Relevance ==
China comes up in '[[Encroaching Control]]' when Reagan (mis-)quotes [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[Vladimir Lenin|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 [[communism|communist]] professional organizers are scattered up and down the length and breadth of [[Latin America]].''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:People%27s_Republic_of_China|People's Republic of China]]

China

2026-08-28T15:14:47Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Places]]
China is the most populated country on Earth, and uses an unusual hybrid economic system. While the country has been [[communism|communist]]/[[socialism|socialist]] since the late 1940s, it has begun to operate under some [[capitalism|capitalist]] principles for financial growth.

China was a frequent discussion point during [[Reagan Radio Commentaries|Reagan's 1975-1979 radio show]], often in relation to the island of Taiwan.

== Speech Relevance ==
China comes up in '[[Encroaching Control]]' when Reagan (mis-)quotes [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[Vladimir Lenin|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 [[communism|communist]] professional organizers are scattered up and down the length and breadth of [[Latin America]].''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:People%27s_Republic_of_China|People's Republic of China]]

China

2026-08-28T15:12:08Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Places]]
China is the most populated country on Earth, and uses an unusual hybrid economic system. While the country has been [[communism|communist]]/[[socialism|socialist]] since the late 1940s, it has begun to operate under some [[capitalism|capitalist]] principles for financial growth. China was a frequent discussion point during Reagan's radio 1975-1979 radio show, often in relation to the island of Taiwan.

== Speech Relevance ==
China comes up in '[[Encroaching Control]]' when Reagan (mis-)quotes [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[Vladimir Lenin|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 [[communism|communist]] professional organizers are scattered up and down the length and breadth of [[Latin America]].''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:People%27s_Republic_of_China|People's Republic of China]]

Great Society

2026-08-28T13:40:58Z

Reagan admin:

The Great Society is the collection of programs that came out of [[Lyndon B Johnson|Lyndon B. Johnson]]'s first (and only) full term as President. Some of these are:
<UL>
<LI>[[wikipedia:Medicare_(United_States)|Medicare]]
<LI>[[wikipedia:Medicaid|Medicaid]]
<LI>the [[wikipedia:National_Foundation_on_the_Arts_and_the_Humanities|National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities]]
<LI>the [[wikipedia:PBS|Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)]]
<LI>[[wikipedia:Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program|Food Stamps]] (the concept had existed as a New Deal program as well, but was canceled in 1943.)
</UL>
It also gave rise to the "[[wikipedia:War_on_Poverty|War on Poverty]]."

==Speech Relevance ==
The name 'Great Society' hadn't been coined until roughly 5 months before the broadcast of Reagan's '[[A Time For Choosing]]' speech, so there is little ''direct'' connection between Johnson's designs and Reagan's speech. Indirectly, however, Reagan railed against the ideas of a socialized medical system in both '[[A Time For Choosing]]' and '[[Encroaching Control]]' and against the "War on Poverty" in '[[A Time For Choosing]]'.

Reagan also recorded a speech specifically about the dangers of [[Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine|socialized medicine]].

In 1966, before he formally announced his joining the race for California governor, Reagan spoke to a rally at the Patton Center in the Bronx borough of New York. This speech is labelled as "[[The Myth of the Great Society]]".

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Great_Society|Great Society]]

Great Society

2026-08-28T13:30:53Z

Reagan admin:

The Great Society is the collection of programs that came out of [[Lyndon B Johnson|Lyndon B. Johnson]]'s first (and only) full term as President. Some of these are:
<UL>
<LI>[[wikipedia:Medicare|Medicare]]
<LI>[[wikipedia:Medicaid|Medicaid]]
<LI>the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities
<LI>the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
<LI>Food Stamps (the concept had existed as a New Deal program as well, but was canceled in 1943.)
</UL>
It also gave rise to the "War on Poverty."

==Speech Relevance ==
The name 'Great Society' hadn't been coined until roughly 5 months before the broadcast of Reagan's '[[A Time For Choosing]]' speech, so there is little ''direct'' connection between Johnson's designs and Reagan's speech. Indirectly, however, Reagan railed against the ideas of a socialized medical system in both '[[A Time For Choosing]]' and '[[Encroaching Control]]' and against the "War on Poverty" in '[[A Time For Choosing]]'.

Reagan also recorded a speech specifically about the dangers of [[Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine|socialized medicine]].

In 1966, before he formally announced his joining the race for California governor, Reagan spoke to a rally at the Patton Center in the Bronx borough of New York. This speech is labelled as "[[The Myth of the Great Society]]".

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Great_Society|Great Society]]

Founding Fathers

2026-08-27T20:40:28Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
The Founding Fathers is a generic name given to the men and women who contributed to the separation of the American colonies from England. The exact people involved is up to some level of interpretation. Some people look only at the delegates that met, drafted and approved the Declaration of Independence, some include the delegates involved with the [[Constitution]]. Everyone agrees on such famous men as George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, [[Thomas Jefferson]], Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry and John Hancock.

They are often viewed in two main groups: those who signed the [[Declaration of Independence]] and those who signed the [[Constitution]].

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan does little more than mention the term "Founding Fathers" in most of his speeches, including '[[Encroaching Control]]' and '[[A Time For Choosing]]'.

However, in the CPAC speech '[[A City Upon a Hill]]', he digs a little deeper.
<blockquote>Fifty-six men, a little band so unique — we have never seen their like since — pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more. 

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart — but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships — they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home—he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep — all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.</blockquote>

=== Named Signers ===
Reagan mentions 56 men. He's referring to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Who are the men he mentioned by name?
<UL>
<LI>John Hart: Reagan may have exaggerated (whether by accident or not) Hart's time spent in the wilderness of the Sourland Mountains. Hart fled his home in Trenton, New Jersey when the British took the city in November 1776, but returned shortly after Washington won the Battle of Trenton in late-December 1776. His home wasn't destroyed, in fact he invited Washington to dine with him once. He lived three more years.
<LI>Carter Braxton: Braxton didn't die in rags, as Reagan suggests, but he did sink a great deal of his personal fortune into the Revolution.
<LI>William Ellery: I can find no evidence that Ellery had financial trouble after signing the Declaration of Independence. He served in the Rhode Island courts and died in 1820.
<LI>George Clymer: Not only did Clymer not become poor, but he seems to have gotten more wealthy as the war continued. He remained in Philadelphia when General Clinton took the city.
<LI>Lyman Hall: Hall lived in Sunbury Georgia until the town was burned by the British in 1779. His family stayed there until after the end of the war. He settled in Savannah and was governor of Georgia for a year.
<LI>George Walton: Walton spent two years of the war as a British prisoner of war. He was captured after having his leg broken by a cannon ball. He was eventually traded for a British officer.
<LI>Button Gwinnett: Gwinnett was killed in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh in 1777.
<LI>Edward Rutledge: Rutledge, youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence, served as an artillery man in the American Army until his capture at the fall of Charleston. He was later released in 1781. He lived until 1800, serving in the South Carolina assembly until 1796.
<LI>Lewis Morris: Morris' home in New York was burned down at some point during the Revolution, to be rebuilt after the war. In 1790, he donated his land to the government (thinking they would construct a capital in New York).
<LI>Philip Livingston: After the British captured Philadelphia, the Continental Congress moved to York, Pennsylvania. Livingston died there of unknown causes during the war.
<LI>Arthur Middleton: Middleton, like Rutledge, was captured at Charleston and held as a prisoner until after the end of the war. He died in 1787 and his plantation passed to his son Henry. Doesn't look like he was terribly poor either.
<LI>Thomas Nelson Jr.: Nelson was from Yorktown, but there is no evidence that he begged Washington to fire on his home.
</UL>

Reagan's story is suspect at best and might be the source of an email mentioned by Snopes (see sources).

== Sources ==
[[wikipedia:Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States|Founding Fathers]]

[http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp The Price They Paid (Snopes)]

Founding Fathers

2026-08-27T20:40:03Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
The Founding Fathers is a generic name given to the men and women who contributed to the separation of the American colonies from England. The exact people involved is up to some level of interpretation. Some people look only at the delegates that met, drafted and approved the Declaration of Independence, some include the delegates involved with the [[Constitution]]. Everyone agrees on such famous men as George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, [[Thomas Jefferson]], Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry and John Hancock.

They are often viewed in two main groups: those who signed the [[Declaration of Independence]] and those who signed the [[Constitution]].

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan does little more than mention the term "Founding Fathers" in most of his speeches, including '[[Encroaching Control]]' and '[[A Time For Choosing]]'.

However, in the CPAC speech '[[A City Upon a Hill]]', he digs a little deeper.
<blockquote>Fifty-six men, a little band so unique — we have never seen their like since — pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart — but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships — they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home—he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep — all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.</blockquote>

=== Named Signers ===
Reagan mentions 56 men. He's referring to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Who are the men he mentioned by name?
<UL>
<LI>John Hart: Reagan may have exaggerated (whether by accident or not) Hart's time spent in the wilderness of the Sourland Mountains. Hart fled his home in Trenton, New Jersey when the British took the city in November 1776, but returned shortly after Washington won the Battle of Trenton in late-December 1776. His home wasn't destroyed, in fact he invited Washington to dine with him once. He lived three more years.
<LI>Carter Braxton: Braxton didn't die in rags, as Reagan suggests, but he did sink a great deal of his personal fortune into the Revolution.
<LI>William Ellery: I can find no evidence that Ellery had financial trouble after signing the Declaration of Independence. He served in the Rhode Island courts and died in 1820.
<LI>George Clymer: Not only did Clymer not become poor, but he seems to have gotten more wealthy as the war continued. He remained in Philadelphia when General Clinton took the city.
<LI>Lyman Hall: Hall lived in Sunbury Georgia until the town was burned by the British in 1779. His family stayed there until after the end of the war. He settled in Savannah and was governor of Georgia for a year.
<LI>George Walton: Walton spent two years of the war as a British prisoner of war. He was captured after having his leg broken by a cannon ball. He was eventually traded for a British officer.
<LI>Button Gwinnett: Gwinnett was killed in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh in 1777.
<LI>Edward Rutledge: Rutledge, youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence, served as an artillery man in the American Army until his capture at the fall of Charleston. He was later released in 1781. He lived until 1800, serving in the South Carolina assembly until 1796.
<LI>Lewis Morris: Morris' home in New York was burned down at some point during the Revolution, to be rebuilt after the war. In 1790, he donated his land to the government (thinking they would construct a capital in New York).
<LI>Philip Livingston: After the British captured Philadelphia, the Continental Congress moved to York, Pennsylvania. Livingston died there of unknown causes during the war.
<LI>Arthur Middleton: Middleton, like Rutledge, was captured at Charleston and held as a prisoner until after the end of the war. He died in 1787 and his plantation passed to his son Henry. Doesn't look like he was terribly poor either.
<LI>Thomas Nelson Jr.: Nelson was from Yorktown, but there is no evidence that he begged Washington to fire on his home.
</UL>

Reagan's story is suspect at best and might be the source of an email mentioned by Snopes (see sources).

== Sources ==
[[wikipedia:Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States|Founding Fathers]]

[http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp The Price They Paid (Snopes)]

Founding Fathers

2026-08-27T20:39:13Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
The Founding Fathers is a generic name given to the men and women who contributed to the separation of the American colonies from England. The exact people involved is up to some level of interpretation. Some people look only at the delegates that met, drafted and approved the Declaration of Independence, some include the delegates involved with the [[Constitution]]. Everyone agrees on such famous men as George Washington, John Adams, Samuel Adams, [[Thomas Jefferson]], Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry and John Hancock.

They are often viewed in two main groups: those who signed the [[Declaration of Independence]] and those who signed the [[Constitution]].

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan does little more than mention the term "Founding Fathers" in most of his speeches, including '[[Encroaching Control]]' and '[[A Time For Choosing]]'.

However, in the CPAC speech '[[A City Upon a Hill]]', he digs a little deeper.
<blockquote>Fifty-six men, a little band so unique — we have never seen their like since — pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rabble, nor were they adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart — but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships — they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home—he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep — all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.</blockquote>

=== Named Signers ===
Reagan mentions 56 men. He's referring to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Who are the men he mentioned by name?
<UL>
<LI>John Hart: Reagan may have exaggerated (whether by accident or not) Hart's time spent in the wilderness of the Sourland Mountains. Hart fled his home in Trenton, New Jersey when the British took the city in November 1776, but returned shortly after Washington won the Battle of Trenton in late-December 1776. His home wasn't destroyed, in fact he invited Washington to dine with him once. He lived three more years.
<LI>Carter Braxton: Braxton didn't die in rags, as Reagan suggests, but he did sink a great deal of his personal fortune into the Revolution.
<LI>William Ellery: I can find no evidence that Ellery had financial trouble after signing the Declaration of Independence. He served in the Rhode Island courts and died in 1820.
<LI>George Clymer: Not only did Clymer not become poor, but he seems to have gotten more wealthy as the war continued. He remained in Philadelphia when General Clinton took the city.
<LI>Lyman Hall: Hall lived in Sunbury Georgia until the town was burned by the British in 1779. His family stayed there until after the end of the war. He settled in Savannah and was governor of Georgia for a year.
<LI>George Walton: Walton spent two years of the war as a British prisoner of war. He was captured after having his leg broken by a cannon ball. He was eventually traded for a British officer.
<LI>Button Gwinnett: Gwinnett was killed in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh in 1777.
<LI>Edward Rutledge: Rutledge, youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence, served as an artillery man in the American Army until his capture at the fall of Charleston. He was later released in 1781. He lived until 1800, serving in the South Carolina assembly until 1796.
<LI>Lewis Morris: Morris' home in New York was burned down at some point during the Revolution, to be rebuilt after the war. In 1790, he donated his land to the government (thinking they would construct a capital in New York).
<LI>Philip Livingston: After the British captured Philadelphia, the Continental Congress moved to York, Pennsylvania. Livingston died there of unknown causes during the war.
<LI>Arthur Middleton: Middleton, like Rutledge, was captured at Charleston and held as a prisoner until after the end of the war. He died in 1787 and his plantation passed to his son Henry. Doesn't look like he was terribly poor either.
<LI>Thomas Nelson Jr.: Nelson was from Yorktown, but there is no evidence that he begged Washington to fire on his home.
</UL>

Reagan's story is suspect at best and might be the source of an email mentioned by Snopes (see sources).

== Sources ==
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States Founding Fathers (Wikipedia)]

[http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp The Price They Paid (Snopes)]

J William Fulbright

2026-08-27T15:59:10Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Senator J. William Fulbright was an Arkansas Senator from 1945 to 1975. He pushed for the United States' participation in what would become the United Nations.

He stood with the Dixiecrats against multiple pieces of Civil Rights legislation. He also opposed MacCarthyism.

The Fulbright Program is named after him.

He was a mentor to President Bill Clinton.

On one occasion, he interrupted a UN Security council meeting regarding the "chicken tax" a set of tariffs put in place in response to foreign tariffs placed on United States chickens. The "chicken tax" also included light trucks, which was an issue for another person mentioned in Reagan speeches, [[Walter Reuther]].

== Relevance in Speech ==
In '[[A Time For Choosing]]' Reagan claims that Fulbright
<BLOCKQUOTE>''has said at Stanford University that the [[Constitution]] is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Here are Senator Fulbright's actual words:
<BLOCKQUOTE>"The President is hobbled in his task of leading the American people to consensus and concerted action by the restrictions of power imposed on him by a constitutional system designed for an 18th century agrarian society far removed from the centers of world power." ...</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>"He (the President) alone, among elected officials can rise above parochialism and private pressures. He alone, in his role as teacher and moral leader, can hope to overcome the excesses and inadequacies of a public opinion that is all too often ignorant of the needs, the dangers, and the opportunities in our foreign relations." ...</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>"It is imperative that we break out of the intellectual confines of cherished and traditional beliefs and open our minds to the possibility that Basic Changes in Our System may be essential to meet the requirements of the 20th century."</BLOCKQUOTE>
(These opinions were also published in ''Law and Order'' magazine April 1971, pages 8-9.)

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:J._William_Fulbright|J. William Fulbright]]

[http://www.latterdayconservative.com/articles/the-campaign-to-abolish-the-constitution/ The Campaign to Abolish the Constitution]

[http://thomasjeffersoncenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Patriot-Assembly-SG-Download-Version.pdf (PDF) ''We Can Heal America'' booklet from the Thomas Jefferson Center page 20-21]

Constitution

2026-08-27T15:57:40Z

Reagan admin:

Generally speaking, a Constitution is a set of governing principles for a state or organization. Many countries have or had Constitutions. Among the most unique is the Constitution of the United States.

== Speech Relevance ==
The Constitution is mentioned a couple times in Reagan's speeches.

In '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[J William Fulbright|Senator Fulbright]] has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
So, Fulbright's complaint is that the President (at the time [[Lyndon B Johnson]]) wants to help people, but can't, because the Constitution prevents him from doing so.

In '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 [[Leveling|level the earnings]] of our citizens, aiming again at that mediocrity which is the utopian dream of the socialists.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

In '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men's dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contain many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, "Government grants you these rights," and ours says, "You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Reagan, here, touches on the fundamental difference which makes the United States Constitution so unique. The United States exists to aid our population, by unifying them, in ways that those people couldn't on their own or in smaller groups. For example, an individual or a family or even a city would have a hard time defending itself against an external foe. This ties to [[Natural Rights]] and the Declaration of Independence's reference to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." That is why the Constitution provides for "the common defense".
== Source Links ==
[http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html Declaration of Independence ''(archive.gov)'']

[http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html The United States Constitution]

==Some Available Texts==
Additional information about the Constitution is available in e-books which this Wiki's Administrator has restored and made available to purchase through Amazon.

[[amazon:B007U0ZN0U|The United States and the States Under the Constitution]]

[[amazon:B00BFIFRSQ|The Harvard Classics Volume 43: American Historical Documents]]

[[amazon:B007I6OX5C|A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America]]

Constitution

2026-08-27T15:57:05Z

Reagan admin:

Generally speaking, a Constitution is a set of governing principles for a state or organization. Many countries have or had Constitutions. Among the most unique is the Constitution of the United States.

== Speech Relevance ==
The Constitution is mentioned a couple times in Reagan's speeches.
In '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[J William Fulbright|Senator Fulbright]] has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
So, Fulbright's complaint is that the President (at the time [[Lyndon B Johnson]]) wants to help people, but can't, because the Constitution prevents him from doing so.
In '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 [[Leveling|level the earnings]] of our citizens, aiming again at that mediocrity which is the utopian dream of the socialists.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
In '[[A City Upon a Hill]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men's dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man's relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contain many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but it is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, "Government grants you these rights," and ours says, "You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Reagan, here, touches on the fundamental difference which makes the United States Constitution so unique. The United States exists to aid our population, by unifying them, in ways that those people couldn't on their own or in smaller groups. For example, an individual or a family or even a city would have a hard time defending itself against an external foe. This ties to [[Natural Rights]] and the Declaration of Independence's reference to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." That is why the Constitution provides for "the common defense".
== Source Links ==
[http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html Declaration of Independence ''(archive.gov)'']

[http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html The United States Constitution]

==Some Available Texts==
Additional information about the Constitution is available in e-books which this Wiki's Administrator has restored and made available to purchase through Amazon.

[[amazon:B007U0ZN0U|The United States and the States Under the Constitution]]

[[amazon:B00BFIFRSQ|The Harvard Classics Volume 43: American Historical Documents]]

[[amazon:B007I6OX5C|A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America]]

Alexander Hamilton

2026-08-27T15:53:41Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and served as the first Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington.He did not participate in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, however he joined the army and rose through the ranks to become aide-de-camp to General George Washington during the American Revolution. He was a supporter of a strong central government, which led him to butt heads often with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In his position, he created the "First Bank of the United States" and the United States Mint. He contributed 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers which supported the [[Constitution|US Constitution]].

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan speaks of the Founders several times and directly mentioned Hamilton by quoting him:

<BLOCKQUOTE>''We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the [[Iron Curtain]], "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are 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." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

Alexander Hamilton wrote this in a letter to the Daily Advertiser and it was published February 21, 1797. It is part of [https://books.google.com/books?ei=dUcWTpuaHsT0gAfPpeEL&ct=result&dq=&jtp=245&id=x5q-cszpoPYC&ots=j0QS9L0jfK#v=onepage&q&f=false The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Volume 6] and found on page 245.

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Alexander_Hamilton|Alexander Hamilton]]

Alexander Hamilton

2026-08-27T15:49:53Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Alexander Hamilton was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and served as the first Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington.He did not participate in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, however he joined the army and rose through the ranks to become aide-de-camp to General George Washington during the American Revolution. He was a supporter of a strong central government, which led him to butt heads often with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In his position, he created the "First Bank of the United States" and the United States Mint. He contributed 51 of the 85 Federalist Papers which supported the [[Constitution|US Constitution]].

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan speaks of the Founders several times and directly mentioned Hamilton by quoting him:

<BLOCKQUOTE>''We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the [[Iron Curtain]], "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are 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." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

Alexander Hamilton wrote this in a letter to the Daily Advertiser and it was published February 21, 1797.

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Alexander_Hamilton|Alexander Hamilton]]

James Madison

2026-08-27T15:49:07Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]][[Category:President]]
Madison played a very large role in the drafting of the [[Constitution|United States Constitution]]. His notes, taken during the proceedings, are a primary source of the debate, sometimes heated, over the strength of the future federal government. He felt so strongly about the Constitution that, along with [[Alexander Hamilton]] and John Jay, published letters in its favor in newspapers under the name ''Publius''. These letters were later compiled into what is known as The Federalist Papers. Madison was also the fourth President of the United States. During his time as President, the United States fought and won the War of 1812.

== Speech Relevance ==
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Madison did, indeed, make this claim in a speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 16, 1788. He went on to say:
<blockquote>On a candid examination of history we shall find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which in republics, have more frequently than any other cause produced despotism. If we go over the whole history of the ancient and modern republics, we shall find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes.</blockquote>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:James_Madison|James Madison]]

Useful idiots

2026-08-27T15:47:05Z

Reagan admin:

Useful Idiots (or Willing Idiots) are those people who were willing to naively believe a person or group with the ultimate goal of appeasement. Its origin lied in westerners who were willing sympathizers with the [[Soviet Union]].

== Speech Relevance ==
In '[[Encroaching Control]]' Reagan speaks of [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] and how:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], determined the idea that the [[communism|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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
There have been thousands, if not millions of these "willing idiots" throughout history. An example of some can be found by exploring Reagan's experiences with Hollywood...from '[[Encroaching Control]]' again:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

Those "misguided, well-meaning" people may be Reagan making reference to the 1947 "[[wikipedia:Committee for the First Amendment|Committee for the First Amendment]]" which was a collection of Hollywood actors, writers and directors who decided to stand against the House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee in support of a group that became known as the Hollywood Ten.

The [[wikipedia:Hollywood_blacklist#Hollywood_Ten_and_beyond|Hollywood Ten]] was a group of screenwriters and directors who were found in contempt of Congress and blacklisted when they refused to answer questions about their involvement with the Communist Party.

Members of the "Committee for the First Amendment" included such Hollywood blockbuster stars as Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Henry Fonda, Gene Kelly, Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Henreid, Billy Wilder, Sterling Hayden (who turned out to actually be a Communist Party member), Groucho Marx, Lucille Ball, Danny Kaye, Lena Horne and Frank Sinatra.

The extent of the support went as far as some of these stars traveling to Washington D.C. in solidarity with their colleagues. They were unprepared for the level of evidence already presented to Congress. Congress had membership checks, party rosters, even some Communist Party membership cards. Humphrey Bogart in particular was rather upset over the situation. Having stood with Communists, people began to think he was one himself. Bogart is known to have said, "You F—ers sold me out!" and later wrote an article for Photoplay magazine in March of 1948 stating emphatically that he was "No Communist!"

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Useful_idiot|Useful Idiot]]

[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=135140 Google Answers on Useful Idiots]

Useful idiots

2026-08-27T15:40:28Z

Reagan admin:

Useful Idiots (or Willing Idiots) are those people who were willing to naively believe a person or group with the ultimate goal of appeasement. Its origin lied in westerners who were willing sympathizers with the [[Soviet Union]].

== Speech Relevance ==
In '[[Encroaching Control]]' Reagan speaks of [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] and how:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''[[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], determined the idea that the [[communism|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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
There have been thousands, if not millions of these "willing idiots" throughout history. An example of some can be found by exploring Reagan's experiences with Hollywood...from '[[Encroaching Control]]' again:
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

Those "misguided, well-meaning" people may be Reagan making reference to the 1947 "Committee for the First Amendment" which was a collection of Hollywood actors, writers and directors who decided to stand against the House of Representatives' Un-American Activities Committee in support of a group that became known as the Hollywood Ten.

The Hollywood Ten was a group of screenwriters and directors who were found in contempt of Congress and blacklisted when they refused to answer questions about their involvement with the Communist Party.

Members of the "Committee for the First Amendment" included such Hollywood blockbuster stars as Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Henry Fonda, Gene Kelly, Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Henreid, Billy Wilder, Sterling Hayden, Groucho Marx, Lucille Ball, Danny Kaye, Lena Horne and Frank Sinatra.

The extent of the support went as far as some of these stars traveling to Washington D.C. in solidarity with their colleagues. They were unprepared for the level of evidence already presented to Congress. Congress had membership checks, party rosters, even some Communist Party membership cards. Humphrey Bogart in particular was rather upset over the situation. Having stood with Communists, people began to think he was one himself. Bogart is known to have said, "You F—ers sold me out!" and later wrote an article for Photoplay magazine in March of 1948 stating emphatically that he was "No Communist!"

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Useful_idiot|Useful Idiot]]

[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=135140 Google Answers on Useful Idiots]

Nikolai Bulganin

2026-08-27T15:37:26Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Nikolai Bulganin served as Premier of the Soviet Union for 3 years, from 1955 to 1958. He was a supporter of [[Joseph Stalin]] while Stalin was alive, holding positions such as Deputy Commissar for Defense and Marshall of the Soviet Union. Upon Stalin's death, he became Defense Minister and stood as a supporter of [[Nikita Khrushchev]] and his policies of reform and "destalinization". He became premier in 1955. Within two years, Bulganin had soured on the reform policies and began to back Khrushchev's opposition. While the opposition was defeated, Bulganin managed to stay around for another year, until forced to resign.

==Speech Relevance==
In '[[Encroaching Control]]' and '[[A Foot in the Door]]', Reagan claims Bulganin said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
No citation can be found.

==Source Links==

[[wikipedia:Nikolai_Bulganin|Nikolai Bulganin]]

Lyndon B Johnson

2026-08-27T15:18:23Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]][[Category:President]]
Lyndon B (Baines) Johnson was the 36th President of the United States following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After finishing Kennedy's term, Johnson was elected to one term as President in 1964. He also served in the House of Representatives and Senate, (including a stint as Senate Majority Leader during the Eisenhower administration).

==Speech Relevance==
Though never mentioned by name, Johnson plays a prominent role in '[[A Time For Choosing]]' due to the fact the speech was given in support of Johnson's Republican rival, [[Barry Goldwater]]. Reagan took to the airwaves attacking the programs Johnson wished to pursue as President falling under the umbrella title of the [[Great Society]]. He would further attack the Great Society by name in 1966 with his '[[The Myth of the Great Society]]' speech.

==Subsequent Research==
It is worth noting that Johnson had connections to several people mentioned in '[[A Time For Choosing]]' such as [[Billie Sol Estes]] and [[Bobby Baker]]. Both were highly corrupt and spent time in jail for their crimes. The more fringe information online ties Johnson (through Baker) to the assassination of President Kennedy.

Also, the [https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/walter-reuther AFL-CIO website biography] of [[Walter Reuther]] claims Reuther met with Johnson on a weekly basis in 1964 and 1965.

==Source Links==
[[wikipedia:Lyndon_B._Johnson|Lyndon B. Johnson]]

Cuba

2026-08-26T19:09:25Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Places]]
Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean Sea which sits as close as 90 miles off the coast of the United States. It has been a borderline [[socialism|socialist]]/[[communism|communist]] country since [[Fidel Castro]] took power in 1959. Currently, the island is strong allies with socialist Venezuela and has maintained its ties to Russia. During his presidency, President Barack Obama pushed to normalize relations with Cuba, in fact being the first president to visit the country in nearly 100 years (the last visit being 1928), but many of these actions were reversed by President Donald Trump.

== Speech Relevance ==
In '[[A Time For Choosing]]' Reagan tells a story about a Cuban who had escaped the island while it was under [[Fidel Castro|Castro's]] rule:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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." 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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
In '[[Encroaching Control]]', Reagan makes a brief reference to Cuba as being:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''a Russian beach head 90 miles off our Florida coast''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Little would anyone realize that within the next year, Cuba almost became a literal beach head for the Soviet Union when they attempted to place Soviet missile bases on the island. Luckily, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis|Cuban Missile Crisis] was averted.

==Other Appearances==
Reagan references Cuba frequently during his [[Reagan Radio Commentaries|Radio Commentaries]] in the 1970s, with 18 named commentaries and several which mention Cuba tangently.

In the first of these commentaries, Reagan mentions 2 US Senators who had recently visited the island. These appear to be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Javits|Jacob Javits (R-NY)] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claiborne_Pell|Clairborne Pell (D-RI)] who visited in September 1974.

== Source Links ==
[wikipedia:Cuba|Cuba]]

[https://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/cuba_the_people_part_1 Cuba: The People] - a 1974 produced documentary filmed in Cuba.

[[media:ERSF-05-07-1962_Agriculture%20and%20Food%20Situation%20in%20Cuba.pdf|Agriculture and Food Situation in Cuba, May 1962]] - discussing the de-evolution of life in Cuba after Castro took power.

A Foot in the Door

2026-08-26T15:55:58Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Speeches]]
While digging through the Internet looking for information for this wiki, a PDF of the following document came up. Again, this speech is very similar to '[[Encroaching Control]]' and '[[Business, Ballots and Bureaus]]'.

==Prepared Text==
A FOOT IN THE DOOR 
An Address by 
Ronald Reagan 
Illinois Manufacturers' Costs Association 
May 9. 1961 

It must seem presumptuous to some of you for a member of my profession to stand here and attempt to talk on problems of the nation. It would be strange if it were otherwise. We in [[Hollywood]] are not unaware of the concept many of our fellow citizens have of us and of our industry. We realize that our merchandise is made up of tinsel, colored lights and a large measure of make-believe. It is also true that our business methods and practices have reflected this footlight glamour more than the very real side of our very real business.

However, a few years ago "a funny thing happened to us on the way to the theatre". Ugly reality came to our town on direct orders of the [[Kremlin]]. Hard core party organizers infiltrated our business. They created cells, organized Communist fronts, and for a time, deceived numbers of our people, who with the best of intentions, joined these fronts while still ignorant of their true purpose. The aim was to gain economic control of our industry and then subvert our screens to the dissemination of Communist propaganda.

Whatever the shortcomings, Hollywood had achieved a great deal. In the finest traditions of free enterprise, 70 per cent of the playing time of all the screens of the world had been captured by the output of the American film capitol. You may disagree sometimes with our "boy meets girl" plot, but all over the world our pictures were a window through which less fortunate humans had a glimpse of freedom and of our material comforts as well. The men in the [[Kremlin]] wanted this propaganda medium for their own destructive purposes.

THE MOVIE STRIKE

Confident of their power, the Reds in our midst made one mistake in judgment. They mistook their ability to deceive for success in conversion. Under the guise of a jurisdictional strike, they made an open effort to destroy the guilds and unions who remained free from their control. Ultimately, they hoped for one vertical union of motion picture people under the umbrella of [[Harry Bridges]]' maritime union. After the first shock, the people of the movie colony rallied quickly — we lived through scenes that heretofore had been only make-believe. Thousands of massed pickets overturned cars, homes were bombed, and threats of acid in the face were directed at performers. Months later their power was broken. The studios had remained open thanks to the refusal of management and the majority of our people to be intimidated.

We now know of course that we only won an isolated battle. In the "spirit of Camp David" the Communist party has ordered once again the infiltration of the picture business as well as the theatre and television. They are crawling out from under the rocks; and memories being as short as they are, there are plenty of well-meaning but misguided people willing to give them a hand.

We don't mean to present ourselves as "being able to run the circus now that we‘ve seen the monkey," but it is possible we have an awareness not shared by many of our fellow citizens.

Most people agree that the ideological struggle with Russia is the number one problem in the world. Millions of words are used almost daily to record the fluctuating temperature of the cold war. And yet, many men in high places in government and many who mould opinion in the press and on the airwaves, subscribe to a theory that we are at peace, and we must make no overt move which might endanger that peace. "Men cry peace, but there is no peace." The inescapable truth is that we are at war, and we are losing that war simply because we don't, or won't, realize that we are in it.

True, it is a strange war fought with unusual weapons, but we cannot yell foul, because it is a declared war. [[Karl Marx]] established the cardinal principle that [[Communism]] and [[Capitalism]] cannot co-exist in the world together. Our way of life, our system, must be totally destroyed; then the world communist state will be erected on the ruins. In interpreting Marx, [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] 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."

THE TIME IS HERE AGAIN

Last November, the communist parties of 81 countries held a convention in Moscow; and on December 6, re-affirmed this principle of war to the death. In a 20,000-word manifesto, they called on Communists in countries where there were non-communist governments to be traitors and work for the destruction of their own governments by subversion and treason.

Only in that phase of the war which causes our greatest fear are we ahead — the use of armed force. Thanks to the dedicated patriotism and realistic thinking of our men in uniform we would win a shooting war. But, this isn't a decisive factor in the Communist campaign. They never really intended to conquer us by force unless we yielded to a massive peace campaign and disarmed. Then, the Russians would resort to armed conflict if it could shortcut their time table with no great risk to themselves.

In 1923, Lenin said that they would take Eastern Europe, next organize the hordes of Asia, then surround the United States, and, he predicted, "...that last bastion of [[Capitalism]] will not have to be taken. It will fall into our outstretched hands like over-ripe fruit."

[[Eastern Europe]] has been taken, and they are organizing the hordes of Asia around the red colossus of [[China]]. Even now, it would appear we are preparing to drink the bitter cup of capitulation in Laos only partly diluted by face-saving devices. [[Cuba]] is a Soviet beach-head ninety miles off shore, and more than 250,000 communist organizers are spread up and down [[Latin America]].

Meanwhile, other communist tactics are also working on schedule. [[Nikolai Bulganin|Bulganin]] said, "The American working man is too well fed; we cannot appeal to him, but when through inflation America has priced herself out of the world market and unemployment follows — then we will settle our debt with the United States."

American apathy is due at least in part to our belief that the small number of American Communists is evidence of weakness and a lack of threat. But, history makes no secret of the fact that Lenin became the leader of the world conspiracy on just that issue — that the Communist party would remain a small, dedicated, highly-trained cadre which would use and manipulate the masses when necessary. Lenin termed us the "[[useful idiots|willing idiots]]." In our life time, this dedicated handful has enslaved one-third of the world's people on one-fourth of the earth's land surface.

The Communists are supremely confident of victory. They believe that you and I, under the constant pressure of the cold war, will give up, one by one, our democratic customs and traditions. We'll adopt emergency "temporary" totalitarian measures, until one day we'll awaken to find we have grown so much like the enemy that we no longer have any cause for conflict.

Three 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 they awaken one day to find they have Communism." This is not a new thought. In 1788, [[James Madison]] told the [[Virginia convention]], "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Others much more recently have counted on this with no realization they would one day be furthering the Soviet cause. A socialist clergyman, writing in the [[The New Leader|New Leader]], the socialist magazine of 1927, called for a new strategy. He said Socialists should place themselves in government jobs and work for government ownership of power, and control of railroads, banking, and key industries. He called his program -"Encroaching Control." Not too long ago, Norman Thomas, six times a candidate for President on the socialist party ticket, commented that "the American people would never knowingly vote for Socialism but that under the name of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program."

Appealing not to the worst, but to the best in our natures, they have used our sense of fair play — our willingness to compromise — and have perfected a technique of "foot in the door" legislation. Get any part of a proposed program accepted, then with the principle of governmental participation in that field established, work for expansion, always aiming at the ultimate goal — a government that will someday be a big brother to us all.

THE FIRST STEPS

Traditionally, one of the easiest first steps in imposing statism on a people has been government paid medicine. It is the easiest to present as a humanitarian project. No one wants to oppose care for the sick. Today, we have the costliest governmental medical program in the world in our [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] hospitals. All of us are agreed that a man wounded in the service of his country is entitled to the finest in medical and hospital care. However, today three out of four [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] beds are filled with patients suffering diseases or injuries neither originated by, nor aggravated by military service. There are only 40,000 service connected disabilities in the United States, yet every year the Federal budget contains millions of dollars for additional [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] hospital building and expansion. Counting the twenty-three million of us who are veterans plus other governmental programs, one of four citizens are entitled to some form of government paid medical or hospital care.

It is now proposed that all people of [[Social Security]] age be given government paid medical and hospital care. Once again, emergency is invoked, and we are given a picture of millions of senior citizens desperately needing medical care and unable to finance it. In all the emotional presentation, the backers of this program seem strangely reluctant to face the facts. In the last ten years, 127 million Americans have come under the protection of some form of medical and hospital insurance. This includes more than two-thirds of those of social security age and more than 70 per cent of all citizens. If the present rate of increase continues, by 1970 some 90 per cent of the population will be so insured. As nearly as can be determined, less than 10 per cent of our senior citizens require aid in meeting their medical needs.

The last session of Congress adopted a measure known as the Kerr-Mills bill to provide money for state administered aid to these people. However, without even waiting to see if this meets the problem, a revised version of the once defeated [[Forand Bill]] is advocated to force all people into a compulsory government health insurance program, regardless of need. Why? Well, ex-Congressman [[Aime Forand|Forand]] provides the answer. He says, "If we can only break through and get our foot in the door, then we can expand the program after that." [[Walter Reuther]] has said his group makes no secret of the fact that they want nationalized health service for all. [[New America|New American]], a socialist magazine, writes, "The [[Forand Bill]] will not be paid for on the insurance principle 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."

In 1935, [[Social Security]] started with a 3 per cent contribution on $3000 of income. Now it is 6 per cent of $4800; and if the proposed expansions plus the medical program are adopted, by 1969 it will be 11 per cent of $5000. It is no secret that pressure is being exerted to remove even the $5000 ceiling and make [[Social Security]] payments be based on total gross income.

[[Social Security]] was never intended to replace private savings, pensions, or insurance. It was to provide a basis for savings so that outright destitution would not follow unemployment by reason of death, disability, or old age, In that light, the actuarial experts in charge estimated in 1943 that by 1957 [[Social Security]] benefit payments would total $1.2 billion per year, but, the temptation to politicians to vote people a raise particularly in election years was too great. In 1957, the total outgo was more than $7 billion and in 1959, outgo began exceeding income. The recipients of Social Security benefits today will collect $65 billion more than they paid in. You and I, who are paying into this program are unfunded to an amount between $300-and-$600 billion.

The average citizen has been led to believe he and his employer are contributing to a fund and that some day he will call upon this, his own money, to carry him over his non-earning years. But this isn't what [[Social Security]] representatives said before the United States Supreme Court. They stated that [[Social Security]] was not an insurance program and was not based on any actuarial standards. They stated that [[Social Security]] dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the payment of that tax does not automatically entitle anyone to benefits. Benefit payments are a welfare program which can be curtailed or cancelled anytime Congress should so decide.

And what of our sons — the young man joining the work force in the next few years? He will be taxed to try and catch up on that mounting deficit. If he could have his [[Social Security]] Tax to invest in private insurance, it would provide for almost double the benefits provided by [[Social Security]]. This is not the only price we are paying in individual freedom. The press recently told of a [[Amish|group whose religious belief]] forbade their participation in any government welfare program. Their property was seized and their cattle sold at auction to enforce their payment of Social Security taxes.

In education, the foot in the door was the $900 million [[National Defense Education Act of 1958]]. The excuse was, as usual, the cold war. Russia had put a [[Sputnik]] into orbit; obviously, our educational system must be at fault. Now the largest spending lobby in Washington is promoting a $2½ billion program to alleviate allegedly crowded schools, underpaid teachers, and bankrupt school districts.

Again, the facts seem strangely at variance. Ninety-nine and one-half per cent of the nation's school districts have not even approached their bonded limit of indebtedness. A 35 per cent increase in students over the last decade has been matched by a 130 per cent increase in spending by the local communities. An increase of 10 million students has seen classrooms built for 15 million. Five hundred colleges, as of this moment, can take an additional 200,000 students without adding so much as a desk or chair. We are told we must build 60,000 classrooms a year for the next ten years, but they forget to tell us we've been building 68,000 a year for the last five years and that continuation of this rate will give us a surplus of classrooms by 1970.

Of course, we want teachers to be paid adequately; and we age doing something about it. Their average pay has risen in the last few years from $3l00 to $5300 annually. The truth is, not one shred of evidence has been presented that federal aid of any kind is required. Could we possibly believe that three-fourths of one billion dollars a year in federal aid could solve any great emergency when we are spending nearly twenty billion dollars a year at the local level?

FEDERAL AID MEANS FEDERAL CONTROL

Federal aid is the foot in the door to federal control. In spite of their denials, their own words betray them. The Director of Public Education of the State of Washington tells of the two-year struggle of his state to meet the rigid requirements of the National Director of Education under the present act. He says, "This is federal control by indirection — all the more dangerous because it poses as a federal handout."

A former president of the [[National Education Association]] states publicly, "We might have to have temporary federal control to bring about integration in the South."

A former chairman of the President's youth fitness program says, "We can no longer afford local management of the schools. We must have a national school system to compete on equal terms with Russia."

The [[Health, Education and Welfare Department|Department of Health, Education, and Welfare]] has quadrupled its staff and admits it is working to create national standards of education and a national curriculum.

In short, federal aid is the first step in a federal school system with teachers and subjects removed from parental control on the theory that a bureau in Washington is better qualified to supervise the upbringing of our youth.

SUPREME COURT SAYS "YES"

Twenty-seven years ago, our farmers were told that a federal subsidy did not mean federal control. Now we have seen a rancher, Evetts Haley, Jr., fined $4000 for raising wheat on his own land and feeding it to his own cattle. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction with a single sentence ruling — "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."

This nation has tried to curb the production of a surplus by making it so financially attractive to produce a surplus that we own enough wheat to bake twenty-five loaves of bread for every person alive. In the State of New Mexico, citizens learned they could rent state-owned land for 25 cents an acre and immediately apply for an receive $9 an acre from the federal government for not planting the land.

20% OR 80%?

All of the "farm mess" is concerned with the 20 per cent of agriculture coming under government regulation and subsidy. Eighty per cent of our agricultural economy is out in the free market of supply and demand. It would seem that the answer to the "farm mess" would be to free the other 20 per cent of governmental regimentation; but, what is being advocated? We are told that the only solution to the problem is to bring the other 80 per cent into the government program. To that end a plan is advanced that would result in the licensing of every farm in the United States with complete governmental regulation of production and price. Proponents of the measure admit it will require thousands of additional government employees, more subsidy on a permanent basis, and reduction of supply to raise food prices 15 to 25 per cent. As an example, it is estimated that meat would be reduced in quantity to about 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."

THE SIZE OF THE FOOT

Today, no one denies the American people would resist the nationalization of industry. But, in defiance of this attitude the [[Government Corporations|federal government owns and operates]] more than 19,000 businesses covering 47 lines of activity from rum distilling to the manufacture of surgical equipment. The estimated book value of 700 governmental corporations is $260 billion. Operating tax free, dividend free, and rent free in direct competition with its own citizens, the government loses billions each year in these businesses.

The next time you are caught in traffic take satisfaction in the knowledge that one of these government corporations built a six lane highway in Spain. It runs 15 miles from Madrid to a gambling casino.

All of these things have led to the growth of a collection of internal powers and bureaucratic institutions against which the individual citizen is virtually helpless. We now have a permanent structure of government beyond the reach of Congress and actually capable of dictating policy. This power, under whatever name you choose, is the very essence of totalitarianism.

A year ago, a sub-committee of Congress reported its findings in the field of federal employees. There are almost 2½ million. In 1942, there was one top salaried executive for every 89 employees; today, there is one for every 11. The committee further reported it found little evidence that any bureau, agency, or commission created in answer to an emergency ever went out of existence after the emergency disappeared.

A case in point: Congress ordered the liquidation of the [[Government Corporations|Spruce Products Corporation]] in 1920, but, thirty years later it was still in existence. This corporation was founded in [[World War I]] to find spruce wood for airplane fuselages.

Some people attempt to justify government in business on the grounds of greater efficiency due to central control. An example of this efficiency can be found in the Claims Department of the [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] insurance program. In that department, three government employees take double the time to perform the task normally assigned to each employee in a private insurance company.

OUR ONLY HOPE

Hopeless as it may seem, we can do something about it! We must inform ourselves on the proposals pending in Congress. Look beyond the foot in the door to the ultimate aim. Weigh the price we must pay in individual liberty and whether these programs qualify as things the people can't do for themselves. Then write to your Congressmen and Senators. Also, don't forget to write now and then just to say "well done" to your representative when he has acquitted himself well on the firing line.

A basic point to remember is that none of these extensions of Socialism can be effected without money. The fodder upon which our government has fed and grown beyond the consent of the governed is the fruit of the tax system whose only consistency is that a levy once imposed is seldom removed. An excise tax on telephones imposed during the Korean War was to curb telephone use during the emergency and really wasn't intended for revenue. The war is over, but the tax lingers on — the government has discovered it needs the revenue. This particular tax, plus some of the hundreds of hidden and indirect taxes that burden us, accounts for one-third of your telephone bill. One hundred such taxes account for one-half the price of a loaf of bread, one-fourth the cost of an automobile, one-half your gas and oil.

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once we were told the income tax would never be greater than 2 per cent and that only from the rich. In our lifetime, this law has grown from 31 to more than 440,000 words. We have received this progressive tax direct from [[Karl Marx]] who designed it as the prime essential of a socialist state. In the surtax brackets, the steepest rate of increase occurs through the middle income range where are to be found the bulk of our small business men, professional people, and supervisory personnel -the people Marx said should be taxed out of existence. At sixteen-to-eighteen thousand dollars of income, a man reaches the 50 per cent tax rate. From 50 per cent on up to the confiscatory 9l per cent rate, the government can only justify these brackets on a punitive basis, for the gross revenue derived from all the tax of 50 per cent or above is less than three—fourths of $1 billion.

There can be no moral justification of the progressive tax. Perhaps that is why the bureaucrats pretend it is proportionate taxation. Proportionate taxation we would gladly accept on the theory that those better able to pay should remove some of the burden from those least able to pay. The Bible explains this in its instruction on tithing. We are told we should give the Lord one tenth and if the Lord prospers us ten times as much, we should give ten times as much. But, under our progressive income tax, computing Caesar's share is a little different. If a $5000 a year man today is prospered 10 times, his income tax increases 53 times as much.

Does this help the little man? A man with a gross income of $3500 a wife and two children will find when he has finished paying the hidden and indirect taxes, that the tax collector's share of his gross $3500 is $1059. Some suggest the answer to his problem is to tax the upper incomes even more — but what leeway is left? If the government confiscated all personal income above $6000 a year. the increased revenue wouldn't pay the interest on the national debt.

A PROBLEM IN ARITHMETIC

No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden of one-third of its national income. Today, 31¢ out of every dollar earned is tax and of that 31¢, 22¢ goes to the federal government; leaving 8¢ to be shared by the state, county, and local community. No wonder we are told to ask for federal aid! But wouldn't it make more sense to keep the money here in the first place instead of running it through that puzzle palace on the Potomac only to get it back minus a sizable carrying charge?

THE INFLATION ROUTE

Lenin once said, "The way to destroy Capitalism is to debauch the currency. Through a process of planned inflation, a government can quietly and unobservedly confiscate the wealth of its citizens."

Henry VII substituted copper for silver in his coins, and we have been no less deliberate in our inflationary policies. Our dollar has lost more than half its purchasing power in twenty years. Of course, we are told that incomes have kept pace, that we are earning twice as much so we are still holding our own. This reasoning overlooks the part played by the progressive tax which is based on the number of dollars earned — not their value. The man who earned $5000 a year in 1940, must earn $1&,000 today to break even and pay his increased surtax. The $10,000 a year man faces an increase of $12,000 in his tax bill and must now earn $31,000 just to maintain the same purchasing power.

Project these figures ahead just 15 years, keeping the same annual rate of inflation and the same tax rate, and could anyone even pretend that free enterprise will exist? By 1975, the $5000 a year man will have to earn $33,000 and the $10,000 a year man will have to earn $84,000 just to maintain their 1950 standard of living. Here is the main battleground! We must reduce the government's supply of money and deny it the right to borrow.

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS "THE RUN-AROUND"

Two years ago, I appeared before the [[House Ways and Means Committee]] as a representative of the motion picture industry to urge tax reform. This was an experience similar to going over Niagara Falls in a barrel — the hard way, upstream. In a month of hearings, representatives of practically every segment of our society appeared before the committee. All of them urged some kind of tax reform. It was obvious that the majority of the committee had little sympathy with our plea, so it was no surprise when, several months later, the committee decided to hold new hearings. This time no volunteers were allowed. A hand-picked group of predominantly campus economists appeared and talked of plugging loopholes to increase the government's tax revenue. Most of these so-called loopholes are the legitimate deductions without which the whole tax structure would have long since proved unworkable. The suggestions included disallowance of property taxes and interest on loans for income tax purposes and even the elimination of 100 per cent deductions of charitable contributions.

The biggest lobby in Washington pushing tax reform has a bill which will increase the government's tax take about $18 billion. It is no coincidence that they have, on the other hand, recommendations for $18 billion worth of welfare legislation. This measure will actually be presented as tax reduction with some cut in surtax rates.

Those of the "liberal" persuasion say they "reject the notion that the least government is the best government." They claim our citizens are not intelligent enough to spend their money properly. They feel the government should take the money through taxation and then buy the welfare programs for the masses which they are not smart enough to buy for themselves.

DO WE OWE OURSELVES?

When the old fashioned idea of living within our means and paying something on the National debt is suggested, these same liberals tell us that "only State and Local debt is bad." Through some exotic bookkeeping methods, they seem to feel that the Federal debt is meaningless. It is — it is incomprehensible.

If I had a four inch stack of thousand dollar bills in my hand, I'd be a millionaire. If we had the national debt of $293 billion before us in thousand dollar bills, the pile would be more than 18 miles high. [[Maurice Stans]], former budget director, has said that this debt is only the part of the iceberg which shows above the surface. Legislation already enacted into law has obligated our government to more than $750 billion. Add to this the local and state debts plus the private debts of our citizens, and we find that we are mortgaged in an amount more than double the market value of every tangible asset and every foot of real estate in the United States.

When we point out the danger of more deficit spending, we are told, "we are sacrificing our security on the false altar of a balanced budget." This is not so. Our individual freedom and our free enterprise system are the very sources of our strength, and there can be little security any place in the free world if there isn't fiscal stability in the United States.

With no one using the term "[[Socialism]]" to describe these encroaching controls, we find that today one out of seven of the nation's work force is on the public pay roll. In just 15 years a 50 per cent increase in employees has been met with a 170 per cent increase in the public payroll. One fourth of our medicine is socialized. Senator Byrd estimates that forty million Americans receive some form of direct cash payment from government. We have a tax machine that in direct contravention to the Constitution is not designed to solely raise revenue but is used, openly and admittedly, to control and direct the economy and to equalize the earnings of our people.

OUR SALVATION

Do not forsake the other issues; but as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Strike for the jugular. Reduce taxes and spending. Keep government poor and remain free." Write to your Congressmen as individuals. Fifty letters from a group such as this means more than a resolution or a petition. Demand immediate tax reform which will reduce the percentage of the national income taken by government. There is a bi-partisan tax reform bill, the Herlong-Baker bill, now before the House Ways and Means Committee. A five year gradual reduction of rates makes it the best planned tax reform bill introduced in the last hundred years. For every billion saved in government spending, we can have a 2½ per cent reduction of income tax.

If your Congressman should say we must cut costs first and then reduce taxes — don't stand for it. Remind him that no government in history has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size. Governments don't tax to get the money they need. Governments will always find a need for the money they get.

There can only be one end to the war we are in. It won't go away if we simply try to out wait it. Wars end in victory or defeat. One of the foremost authorities on Communism in the world today has said, we have 10 years. Not ten years to make up our minds, but ten years to win or lose — by 1970 the world will be all slave or all free.

In this land, occurred the only true revolution in man's history. All other revolutions simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Here for the first time the [[Founding Fathers]] — that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since — evolved a government based on the idea that you and I have the God given right and ability within ourselves to determine our own destiny. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction -we didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in the United States when men were free.

A Foot in the Door

2026-08-26T15:55:45Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Speeches]]
While digging through the Internet looking for information for this wiki, a PDF of the following document came up. Again, this speech is very similar to '[[Encroaching Control]]' and '[[Business, Ballots and Bureaus]]'.

==Prepared Text==
A FOOT IN THE DOOR 
An Address by 
Ronald Reagan 
Illinois Manufacturers' Costs Association 
May 9. 1961 

It must seem presumptuous to some of you for a member of my profession to stand here and attempt to talk on problems of the nation. It would be strange if it were otherwise. We in [[Hollywood]] are not unaware of the concept many of our fellow citizens have of us and of our industry. We realize that our merchandise is made up of tinsel, colored lights and a large measure of make-believe. It is also true that our business methods and practices have reflected this footlight glamour more than the very real side of our very real business.

However, a few years ago "a funny thing happened to us on the way to the theatre". Ugly reality came to our town on direct orders of the [[Kremlin]]. Hard core party organizers infiltrated our business. They created cells, organized Communist fronts, and for a time, deceived numbers of our people, who with the best of intentions, joined these fronts while still ignorant of their true purpose. The aim was to gain economic control of our industry and then subvert our screens to the dissemination of Communist propaganda.

Whatever the shortcomings, Hollywood had achieved a great deal. In the finest traditions of free enterprise, 70 per cent of the playing time of all the screens of the world had been captured by the output of the American film capitol. You may disagree sometimes with our "boy meets girl" plot, but all over the world our pictures were a window through which less fortunate humans had a glimpse of freedom and of our material comforts as well. The men in the [[Kremlin]] wanted this propaganda medium for their own destructive purposes.

THE MOVIE STRIKE

Confident of their power, the Reds in our midst made one mistake in judgment. They mistook their ability to deceive for success in conversion. Under the guise of a jurisdictional strike, they made an open effort to destroy the guilds and unions who remained free from their control. Ultimately, they hoped for one vertical union of motion picture people under the umbrella of [[Harry Bridges]]' maritime union. After the first shock, the people of the movie colony rallied quickly — we lived through scenes that heretofore had been only make-believe. Thousands of massed pickets overturned cars, homes were bombed, and threats of acid in the face were directed at performers. Months later their power was broken. The studios had remained open thanks to the refusal of management and the majority of our people to be intimidated.

We now know of course that we only won an isolated battle. In the "spirit of Camp David" the Communist party has ordered once again the infiltration of the picture business as well as the theatre and television. They are crawling out from under the rocks; and memories being as short as they are, there are plenty of well-meaning but misguided people willing to give them a hand.

We don't mean to present ourselves as "being able to run the circus now that we‘ve seen the monkey," but it is possible we have an awareness not shared by many of our fellow citizens.

Most people agree that the ideological struggle with Russia is the number one problem in the world. Millions of words are used almost daily to record the fluctuating temperature of the cold war. And yet, many men in high places in government and many who mould opinion in the press and on the airwaves, subscribe to a theory that we are at peace, and we must make no overt move which might endanger that peace. "Men cry peace, but there is no peace." The inescapable truth is that we are at war, and we are losing that war simply because we don't, or won't, realize that we are in it.

True, it is a strange war fought with unusual weapons, but we cannot yell foul, because it is a declared war. [[Karl Marx]] established the cardinal principle that [[Communism]] and [[capitalism]] cannot co-exist in the world together. Our way of life, our system, must be totally destroyed; then the world communist state will be erected on the ruins. In interpreting Marx, [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] 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."

THE TIME IS HERE AGAIN

Last November, the communist parties of 81 countries held a convention in Moscow; and on December 6, re-affirmed this principle of war to the death. In a 20,000-word manifesto, they called on Communists in countries where there were non-communist governments to be traitors and work for the destruction of their own governments by subversion and treason.

Only in that phase of the war which causes our greatest fear are we ahead — the use of armed force. Thanks to the dedicated patriotism and realistic thinking of our men in uniform we would win a shooting war. But, this isn't a decisive factor in the Communist campaign. They never really intended to conquer us by force unless we yielded to a massive peace campaign and disarmed. Then, the Russians would resort to armed conflict if it could shortcut their time table with no great risk to themselves.

In 1923, Lenin said that they would take Eastern Europe, next organize the hordes of Asia, then surround the United States, and, he predicted, "...that last bastion of [[Capitalism]] will not have to be taken. It will fall into our outstretched hands like over-ripe fruit."

[[Eastern Europe]] has been taken, and they are organizing the hordes of Asia around the red colossus of [[China]]. Even now, it would appear we are preparing to drink the bitter cup of capitulation in Laos only partly diluted by face-saving devices. [[Cuba]] is a Soviet beach-head ninety miles off shore, and more than 250,000 communist organizers are spread up and down [[Latin America]].

Meanwhile, other communist tactics are also working on schedule. [[Nikolai Bulganin|Bulganin]] said, "The American working man is too well fed; we cannot appeal to him, but when through inflation America has priced herself out of the world market and unemployment follows — then we will settle our debt with the United States."

American apathy is due at least in part to our belief that the small number of American Communists is evidence of weakness and a lack of threat. But, history makes no secret of the fact that Lenin became the leader of the world conspiracy on just that issue — that the Communist party would remain a small, dedicated, highly-trained cadre which would use and manipulate the masses when necessary. Lenin termed us the "[[useful idiots|willing idiots]]." In our life time, this dedicated handful has enslaved one-third of the world's people on one-fourth of the earth's land surface.

The Communists are supremely confident of victory. They believe that you and I, under the constant pressure of the cold war, will give up, one by one, our democratic customs and traditions. We'll adopt emergency "temporary" totalitarian measures, until one day we'll awaken to find we have grown so much like the enemy that we no longer have any cause for conflict.

Three 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 they awaken one day to find they have Communism." This is not a new thought. In 1788, [[James Madison]] told the [[Virginia convention]], "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Others much more recently have counted on this with no realization they would one day be furthering the Soviet cause. A socialist clergyman, writing in the [[The New Leader|New Leader]], the socialist magazine of 1927, called for a new strategy. He said Socialists should place themselves in government jobs and work for government ownership of power, and control of railroads, banking, and key industries. He called his program -"Encroaching Control." Not too long ago, Norman Thomas, six times a candidate for President on the socialist party ticket, commented that "the American people would never knowingly vote for Socialism but that under the name of liberalism, they would adopt every fragment of the socialist program."

Appealing not to the worst, but to the best in our natures, they have used our sense of fair play — our willingness to compromise — and have perfected a technique of "foot in the door" legislation. Get any part of a proposed program accepted, then with the principle of governmental participation in that field established, work for expansion, always aiming at the ultimate goal — a government that will someday be a big brother to us all.

THE FIRST STEPS

Traditionally, one of the easiest first steps in imposing statism on a people has been government paid medicine. It is the easiest to present as a humanitarian project. No one wants to oppose care for the sick. Today, we have the costliest governmental medical program in the world in our [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] hospitals. All of us are agreed that a man wounded in the service of his country is entitled to the finest in medical and hospital care. However, today three out of four [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] beds are filled with patients suffering diseases or injuries neither originated by, nor aggravated by military service. There are only 40,000 service connected disabilities in the United States, yet every year the Federal budget contains millions of dollars for additional [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] hospital building and expansion. Counting the twenty-three million of us who are veterans plus other governmental programs, one of four citizens are entitled to some form of government paid medical or hospital care.

It is now proposed that all people of [[Social Security]] age be given government paid medical and hospital care. Once again, emergency is invoked, and we are given a picture of millions of senior citizens desperately needing medical care and unable to finance it. In all the emotional presentation, the backers of this program seem strangely reluctant to face the facts. In the last ten years, 127 million Americans have come under the protection of some form of medical and hospital insurance. This includes more than two-thirds of those of social security age and more than 70 per cent of all citizens. If the present rate of increase continues, by 1970 some 90 per cent of the population will be so insured. As nearly as can be determined, less than 10 per cent of our senior citizens require aid in meeting their medical needs.

The last session of Congress adopted a measure known as the Kerr-Mills bill to provide money for state administered aid to these people. However, without even waiting to see if this meets the problem, a revised version of the once defeated [[Forand Bill]] is advocated to force all people into a compulsory government health insurance program, regardless of need. Why? Well, ex-Congressman [[Aime Forand|Forand]] provides the answer. He says, "If we can only break through and get our foot in the door, then we can expand the program after that." [[Walter Reuther]] has said his group makes no secret of the fact that they want nationalized health service for all. [[New America|New American]], a socialist magazine, writes, "The [[Forand Bill]] will not be paid for on the insurance principle 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."

In 1935, [[Social Security]] started with a 3 per cent contribution on $3000 of income. Now it is 6 per cent of $4800; and if the proposed expansions plus the medical program are adopted, by 1969 it will be 11 per cent of $5000. It is no secret that pressure is being exerted to remove even the $5000 ceiling and make [[Social Security]] payments be based on total gross income.

[[Social Security]] was never intended to replace private savings, pensions, or insurance. It was to provide a basis for savings so that outright destitution would not follow unemployment by reason of death, disability, or old age, In that light, the actuarial experts in charge estimated in 1943 that by 1957 [[Social Security]] benefit payments would total $1.2 billion per year, but, the temptation to politicians to vote people a raise particularly in election years was too great. In 1957, the total outgo was more than $7 billion and in 1959, outgo began exceeding income. The recipients of Social Security benefits today will collect $65 billion more than they paid in. You and I, who are paying into this program are unfunded to an amount between $300-and-$600 billion.

The average citizen has been led to believe he and his employer are contributing to a fund and that some day he will call upon this, his own money, to carry him over his non-earning years. But this isn't what [[Social Security]] representatives said before the United States Supreme Court. They stated that [[Social Security]] was not an insurance program and was not based on any actuarial standards. They stated that [[Social Security]] dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the payment of that tax does not automatically entitle anyone to benefits. Benefit payments are a welfare program which can be curtailed or cancelled anytime Congress should so decide.

And what of our sons — the young man joining the work force in the next few years? He will be taxed to try and catch up on that mounting deficit. If he could have his [[Social Security]] Tax to invest in private insurance, it would provide for almost double the benefits provided by [[Social Security]]. This is not the only price we are paying in individual freedom. The press recently told of a [[Amish|group whose religious belief]] forbade their participation in any government welfare program. Their property was seized and their cattle sold at auction to enforce their payment of Social Security taxes.

In education, the foot in the door was the $900 million [[National Defense Education Act of 1958]]. The excuse was, as usual, the cold war. Russia had put a [[Sputnik]] into orbit; obviously, our educational system must be at fault. Now the largest spending lobby in Washington is promoting a $2½ billion program to alleviate allegedly crowded schools, underpaid teachers, and bankrupt school districts.

Again, the facts seem strangely at variance. Ninety-nine and one-half per cent of the nation's school districts have not even approached their bonded limit of indebtedness. A 35 per cent increase in students over the last decade has been matched by a 130 per cent increase in spending by the local communities. An increase of 10 million students has seen classrooms built for 15 million. Five hundred colleges, as of this moment, can take an additional 200,000 students without adding so much as a desk or chair. We are told we must build 60,000 classrooms a year for the next ten years, but they forget to tell us we've been building 68,000 a year for the last five years and that continuation of this rate will give us a surplus of classrooms by 1970.

Of course, we want teachers to be paid adequately; and we age doing something about it. Their average pay has risen in the last few years from $3l00 to $5300 annually. The truth is, not one shred of evidence has been presented that federal aid of any kind is required. Could we possibly believe that three-fourths of one billion dollars a year in federal aid could solve any great emergency when we are spending nearly twenty billion dollars a year at the local level?

FEDERAL AID MEANS FEDERAL CONTROL

Federal aid is the foot in the door to federal control. In spite of their denials, their own words betray them. The Director of Public Education of the State of Washington tells of the two-year struggle of his state to meet the rigid requirements of the National Director of Education under the present act. He says, "This is federal control by indirection — all the more dangerous because it poses as a federal handout."

A former president of the [[National Education Association]] states publicly, "We might have to have temporary federal control to bring about integration in the South."

A former chairman of the President's youth fitness program says, "We can no longer afford local management of the schools. We must have a national school system to compete on equal terms with Russia."

The [[Health, Education and Welfare Department|Department of Health, Education, and Welfare]] has quadrupled its staff and admits it is working to create national standards of education and a national curriculum.

In short, federal aid is the first step in a federal school system with teachers and subjects removed from parental control on the theory that a bureau in Washington is better qualified to supervise the upbringing of our youth.

SUPREME COURT SAYS "YES"

Twenty-seven years ago, our farmers were told that a federal subsidy did not mean federal control. Now we have seen a rancher, Evetts Haley, Jr., fined $4000 for raising wheat on his own land and feeding it to his own cattle. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction with a single sentence ruling — "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."

This nation has tried to curb the production of a surplus by making it so financially attractive to produce a surplus that we own enough wheat to bake twenty-five loaves of bread for every person alive. In the State of New Mexico, citizens learned they could rent state-owned land for 25 cents an acre and immediately apply for an receive $9 an acre from the federal government for not planting the land.

20% OR 80%?

All of the "farm mess" is concerned with the 20 per cent of agriculture coming under government regulation and subsidy. Eighty per cent of our agricultural economy is out in the free market of supply and demand. It would seem that the answer to the "farm mess" would be to free the other 20 per cent of governmental regimentation; but, what is being advocated? We are told that the only solution to the problem is to bring the other 80 per cent into the government program. To that end a plan is advanced that would result in the licensing of every farm in the United States with complete governmental regulation of production and price. Proponents of the measure admit it will require thousands of additional government employees, more subsidy on a permanent basis, and reduction of supply to raise food prices 15 to 25 per cent. As an example, it is estimated that meat would be reduced in quantity to about 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."

THE SIZE OF THE FOOT

Today, no one denies the American people would resist the nationalization of industry. But, in defiance of this attitude the [[Government Corporations|federal government owns and operates]] more than 19,000 businesses covering 47 lines of activity from rum distilling to the manufacture of surgical equipment. The estimated book value of 700 governmental corporations is $260 billion. Operating tax free, dividend free, and rent free in direct competition with its own citizens, the government loses billions each year in these businesses.

The next time you are caught in traffic take satisfaction in the knowledge that one of these government corporations built a six lane highway in Spain. It runs 15 miles from Madrid to a gambling casino.

All of these things have led to the growth of a collection of internal powers and bureaucratic institutions against which the individual citizen is virtually helpless. We now have a permanent structure of government beyond the reach of Congress and actually capable of dictating policy. This power, under whatever name you choose, is the very essence of totalitarianism.

A year ago, a sub-committee of Congress reported its findings in the field of federal employees. There are almost 2½ million. In 1942, there was one top salaried executive for every 89 employees; today, there is one for every 11. The committee further reported it found little evidence that any bureau, agency, or commission created in answer to an emergency ever went out of existence after the emergency disappeared.

A case in point: Congress ordered the liquidation of the [[Government Corporations|Spruce Products Corporation]] in 1920, but, thirty years later it was still in existence. This corporation was founded in [[World War I]] to find spruce wood for airplane fuselages.

Some people attempt to justify government in business on the grounds of greater efficiency due to central control. An example of this efficiency can be found in the Claims Department of the [[Veterans Administration|Veteran's Administration]] insurance program. In that department, three government employees take double the time to perform the task normally assigned to each employee in a private insurance company.

OUR ONLY HOPE

Hopeless as it may seem, we can do something about it! We must inform ourselves on the proposals pending in Congress. Look beyond the foot in the door to the ultimate aim. Weigh the price we must pay in individual liberty and whether these programs qualify as things the people can't do for themselves. Then write to your Congressmen and Senators. Also, don't forget to write now and then just to say "well done" to your representative when he has acquitted himself well on the firing line.

A basic point to remember is that none of these extensions of Socialism can be effected without money. The fodder upon which our government has fed and grown beyond the consent of the governed is the fruit of the tax system whose only consistency is that a levy once imposed is seldom removed. An excise tax on telephones imposed during the Korean War was to curb telephone use during the emergency and really wasn't intended for revenue. The war is over, but the tax lingers on — the government has discovered it needs the revenue. This particular tax, plus some of the hundreds of hidden and indirect taxes that burden us, accounts for one-third of your telephone bill. One hundred such taxes account for one-half the price of a loaf of bread, one-fourth the cost of an automobile, one-half your gas and oil.

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once we were told the income tax would never be greater than 2 per cent and that only from the rich. In our lifetime, this law has grown from 31 to more than 440,000 words. We have received this progressive tax direct from [[Karl Marx]] who designed it as the prime essential of a socialist state. In the surtax brackets, the steepest rate of increase occurs through the middle income range where are to be found the bulk of our small business men, professional people, and supervisory personnel -the people Marx said should be taxed out of existence. At sixteen-to-eighteen thousand dollars of income, a man reaches the 50 per cent tax rate. From 50 per cent on up to the confiscatory 9l per cent rate, the government can only justify these brackets on a punitive basis, for the gross revenue derived from all the tax of 50 per cent or above is less than three—fourths of $1 billion.

There can be no moral justification of the progressive tax. Perhaps that is why the bureaucrats pretend it is proportionate taxation. Proportionate taxation we would gladly accept on the theory that those better able to pay should remove some of the burden from those least able to pay. The Bible explains this in its instruction on tithing. We are told we should give the Lord one tenth and if the Lord prospers us ten times as much, we should give ten times as much. But, under our progressive income tax, computing Caesar's share is a little different. If a $5000 a year man today is prospered 10 times, his income tax increases 53 times as much.

Does this help the little man? A man with a gross income of $3500 a wife and two children will find when he has finished paying the hidden and indirect taxes, that the tax collector's share of his gross $3500 is $1059. Some suggest the answer to his problem is to tax the upper incomes even more — but what leeway is left? If the government confiscated all personal income above $6000 a year. the increased revenue wouldn't pay the interest on the national debt.

A PROBLEM IN ARITHMETIC

No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden of one-third of its national income. Today, 31¢ out of every dollar earned is tax and of that 31¢, 22¢ goes to the federal government; leaving 8¢ to be shared by the state, county, and local community. No wonder we are told to ask for federal aid! But wouldn't it make more sense to keep the money here in the first place instead of running it through that puzzle palace on the Potomac only to get it back minus a sizable carrying charge?

THE INFLATION ROUTE

Lenin once said, "The way to destroy Capitalism is to debauch the currency. Through a process of planned inflation, a government can quietly and unobservedly confiscate the wealth of its citizens."

Henry VII substituted copper for silver in his coins, and we have been no less deliberate in our inflationary policies. Our dollar has lost more than half its purchasing power in twenty years. Of course, we are told that incomes have kept pace, that we are earning twice as much so we are still holding our own. This reasoning overlooks the part played by the progressive tax which is based on the number of dollars earned — not their value. The man who earned $5000 a year in 1940, must earn $1&,000 today to break even and pay his increased surtax. The $10,000 a year man faces an increase of $12,000 in his tax bill and must now earn $31,000 just to maintain the same purchasing power.

Project these figures ahead just 15 years, keeping the same annual rate of inflation and the same tax rate, and could anyone even pretend that free enterprise will exist? By 1975, the $5000 a year man will have to earn $33,000 and the $10,000 a year man will have to earn $84,000 just to maintain their 1950 standard of living. Here is the main battleground! We must reduce the government's supply of money and deny it the right to borrow.

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS "THE RUN-AROUND"

Two years ago, I appeared before the [[House Ways and Means Committee]] as a representative of the motion picture industry to urge tax reform. This was an experience similar to going over Niagara Falls in a barrel — the hard way, upstream. In a month of hearings, representatives of practically every segment of our society appeared before the committee. All of them urged some kind of tax reform. It was obvious that the majority of the committee had little sympathy with our plea, so it was no surprise when, several months later, the committee decided to hold new hearings. This time no volunteers were allowed. A hand-picked group of predominantly campus economists appeared and talked of plugging loopholes to increase the government's tax revenue. Most of these so-called loopholes are the legitimate deductions without which the whole tax structure would have long since proved unworkable. The suggestions included disallowance of property taxes and interest on loans for income tax purposes and even the elimination of 100 per cent deductions of charitable contributions.

The biggest lobby in Washington pushing tax reform has a bill which will increase the government's tax take about $18 billion. It is no coincidence that they have, on the other hand, recommendations for $18 billion worth of welfare legislation. This measure will actually be presented as tax reduction with some cut in surtax rates.

Those of the "liberal" persuasion say they "reject the notion that the least government is the best government." They claim our citizens are not intelligent enough to spend their money properly. They feel the government should take the money through taxation and then buy the welfare programs for the masses which they are not smart enough to buy for themselves.

DO WE OWE OURSELVES?

When the old fashioned idea of living within our means and paying something on the National debt is suggested, these same liberals tell us that "only State and Local debt is bad." Through some exotic bookkeeping methods, they seem to feel that the Federal debt is meaningless. It is — it is incomprehensible.

If I had a four inch stack of thousand dollar bills in my hand, I'd be a millionaire. If we had the national debt of $293 billion before us in thousand dollar bills, the pile would be more than 18 miles high. [[Maurice Stans]], former budget director, has said that this debt is only the part of the iceberg which shows above the surface. Legislation already enacted into law has obligated our government to more than $750 billion. Add to this the local and state debts plus the private debts of our citizens, and we find that we are mortgaged in an amount more than double the market value of every tangible asset and every foot of real estate in the United States.

When we point out the danger of more deficit spending, we are told, "we are sacrificing our security on the false altar of a balanced budget." This is not so. Our individual freedom and our free enterprise system are the very sources of our strength, and there can be little security any place in the free world if there isn't fiscal stability in the United States.

With no one using the term "[[Socialism]]" to describe these encroaching controls, we find that today one out of seven of the nation's work force is on the public pay roll. In just 15 years a 50 per cent increase in employees has been met with a 170 per cent increase in the public payroll. One fourth of our medicine is socialized. Senator Byrd estimates that forty million Americans receive some form of direct cash payment from government. We have a tax machine that in direct contravention to the Constitution is not designed to solely raise revenue but is used, openly and admittedly, to control and direct the economy and to equalize the earnings of our people.

OUR SALVATION

Do not forsake the other issues; but as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Strike for the jugular. Reduce taxes and spending. Keep government poor and remain free." Write to your Congressmen as individuals. Fifty letters from a group such as this means more than a resolution or a petition. Demand immediate tax reform which will reduce the percentage of the national income taken by government. There is a bi-partisan tax reform bill, the Herlong-Baker bill, now before the House Ways and Means Committee. A five year gradual reduction of rates makes it the best planned tax reform bill introduced in the last hundred years. For every billion saved in government spending, we can have a 2½ per cent reduction of income tax.

If your Congressman should say we must cut costs first and then reduce taxes — don't stand for it. Remind him that no government in history has ever voluntarily reduced itself in size. Governments don't tax to get the money they need. Governments will always find a need for the money they get.

There can only be one end to the war we are in. It won't go away if we simply try to out wait it. Wars end in victory or defeat. One of the foremost authorities on Communism in the world today has said, we have 10 years. Not ten years to make up our minds, but ten years to win or lose — by 1970 the world will be all slave or all free.

In this land, occurred the only true revolution in man's history. All other revolutions simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Here for the first time the [[Founding Fathers]] — that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since — evolved a government based on the idea that you and I have the God given right and ability within ourselves to determine our own destiny. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction -we didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in the United States when men were free.

National Education Association

2026-08-26T15:45:51Z

Reagan admin:

The National Education Association, or NEA, is the largest labor union in the United States. It contributes heavily to the Democratic Party and other left-leaning organizations.

== Speech Relevance ==
In '[[Encroaching Control]]', Reagan discusses the Federal government's slow, but steady, infiltration into controlling the schools, traditionally the role of the state and the local governments. One such area, he shares, is in integration:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 [[Desegregation|integration in the South]].''</BLOCKQUOTE>
I can find no evidence of direct Federal control over any school systems in the enforcement of integration, only the use of [[wikipedia:Little_Rock_Nine#101st_Airborne_escort|Federal military troops]] to enforce the [[wikipedia:Brown_v._Board_of_Education|Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka]] decision.

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:National_Education_Association|National Education Association]]

[http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0858851.html Integration: 1954 to 1963]

The New Leader

2026-08-26T15:40:10Z

Reagan admin:

The New Leader was a [[socialism|socialist]] magazine which ran from 1924 until 2010 (2006 to 2010 were online only). It was the first to publish ''Letter from Birmingham Jail'' by Martin Luther King Jr.
== Speech Relevance ==
From [[Encroaching Control]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''A [[socialism|socialist]] clergyman, writing in 1927, in The New Leader, the [[socialism|socialist]] magazine of that day, called for a new strategy of the American [[socialism|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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
The New Leader's website only contains archives of the online issues, nothing back as far as 1927. In 2006, Columbia University acquired the full archives of the newspaper.

In ''[[Reagan_Speeches#Ronald_Reagan:_The_Notes|Ronald Reagan: The Notes]]'', a book compiling many of the notecards Reagan wrote over his career, we find the following:
<BLOCKQUOTE>'''1927, Rev. Rauschenbusch "New Leader," Official Soc. Paper''' 
The [American] people will never knowingly stage a revolution to bring about socialism. So we should promote the idea of increased [government] control of business & having Socialists get [government] jobs. One man in [government] with his eyes and ears open can do more than a hundred men on the outside. They must work to promote more [government] control of banks, [rail roads] and other businesses; to start a program of [government] control of [electric] power and work for [political] control and management of all key industries. (It didn't bother the [Reverend] that people who wouldn't knowingly vote for [Socialism] should have it forced on them). 
(page 45)
</BLOCKQUOTE>
Another Reagan speech, '[[Business, Ballots and Bureaus]]' from May 1959, confirms this:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''In 1927 the Socialist Raushenbush, writing in the official socialist paper, the "New Leader," urged his fellow socialists to recognize they could not hope for revolution in America. He therefore offered a new program for promoting [[socialism]] by increasing government control of business. He called his program "encroaching control."''</blockquote>
The Raushenbush in question is H. Stephen Raushenbush, though Reagan appears to have confused him with his father, Reverend Walter Rauschenbusch, who was also Socialist and a proponent of the Social Gospel. Walter Rauschenbusch passed away in 1918 and could not have written the 1927 article.

Stephen Raushenbush, however, was alive. The July 27, 1950 edition of the Lawrence Journal-World of Lawrence Kansas contains an article entitled "Jaycees President Preparing Program to Present in City" which discusses Raushenbush and his feeling that ''"One good man with his eyes, ears and wits about him inside the Department of Interior or Treasury Department (of the U.S.) can do more to perfect the technique of control over industry (one of the basic communist tenets) than 100 men on the outside."''

Raushenbush indeed wrote articles in consecutive March 1927 issues of The New Leader entitled "Cataclysmic Socialism or Encroaching Control?" and "Program of Gradual Socialisation of Industry" however, the quotes presented by Reagan and by the Kansas article are not present in either.

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:The_New_Leader|The New Leader]]

[http://library.columbia.edu/news/libraries/2006/20061129_new_leader.html 2006 Press Release from Columbia University on acquiring the New Leader Archives]

[[amazon:0062065130|The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom]]

[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19500727&id=6gtGAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wecMAAAAIBAJ&pg=3294,2254369 Lawrence Journal-World - Jul 27, 1950 ''(Google News)'']

Nikita Khrushchev

2026-08-26T15:16:13Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party during part of the [[Cold War]]. He directly followed [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union starting in 1953, but did not become Premier of the Soviet Union until 1958.

== Speech Relevance ==
Khrushchev is mentioned in both speeches, '[[A Time For Choosing]]' and '[[Encroaching Control]]'.

In '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 are retreating under the pressure of the [[Cold War]], and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Without a specific quote (in A Time For Choosing), it is very difficult to track down Khrushchev's actual words and if he said them. It does sound similar in sentiment to the 1962 statement, that the United States would begin to fly the red flag by the choice of the Americans in a voluntary surrender.

From '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
This is sketchy at best, if not bogus. No evidence of the quote has ever been found in print and only an unconfirmed verbal exchange has been reported. [[wikipedia:Ezra_Taft_Benson|Ezra Taft Benson]], Secretary of the Department of Agriculture under President Eisenhower claimed the following in a speech:
<blockquote>I have personally witnessed the heart-rending results of the loss of freedom. I have talked face-to-face with the godless Communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Khrushchev for a half-day when he visited the United States. Not that I'm proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor.

As we talked face-to-face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under Communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his, and all other grandchildren, will live under freedom, he arrogantly declared, in substance:

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright. But we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands."</blockquote>

Benson claimed to have been told this in 1959, but mentioned it in a book in 1962 and in this above speech in 1966.

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Nikita_Khrushchev|Nikita Khrushchev]]

Nikita Khrushchev

2026-08-26T15:14:44Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union and its Communist Party during part of the [[Cold War]]. He directly followed [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union starting in 1953, but did not become Premier of the Soviet Union until 1958.

== Speech Relevance ==
Khrushchev is mentioned in both speeches, '[[A Time For Choosing]]' and '[[Encroaching Control]]'.

In '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 are retreating under the pressure of the [[Cold War]], and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Without a specific quote (in A Time For Choosing), it is very difficult to track down Khrushchev's actual words and if he said them. It does sound similar in sentiment to the 1962 statement, that the United States would begin to fly the red flag by the choice of the Americans in a voluntary surrender.

From '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
This is sketchy at best, if not bogus. No evidence of the quote has ever been found in print and only an unconfirmed verbal exchange has been reported. Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture under President Eisenhower claimed the following in a speech:
<blockquote>I have personally witnessed the heart-rending results of the loss of freedom. I have talked face-to-face with the godless Communist leaders. It may surprise you to learn that I was host to Mr. Khrushchev for a half-day when he visited the United States. Not that I'm proud of it. I opposed his coming then, and I still feel it was a mistake to welcome this atheistic murderer as a state visitor.

As we talked face-to-face, he indicated that my grandchildren would live under Communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his, and all other grandchildren, will live under freedom, he arrogantly declared, in substance:

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright. But we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands."</blockquote>

Benson claimed to have been told this in 1959, but mentioned it in a book in 1962 and in this above speech in 1966.

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Nikita_Khrushchev|Nikita Khrushchev]]

Harry Bridges

2026-08-26T15:12:47Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]]
Harry Bridges was an Australian-American union leader who frequently associated himself with [[Communism]]. He was part of numerous unions over the course of his life, but is best known as the leader of the [[wikipedia:International_Longshoremen%27s_Association|International Longshoremen's Association]].

Attempts to deport Bridges based on his communist ties were made, but were never successful due to insufficient evidence. In 1994, 4 years after his death, evidence was found of his leadership role in the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA.

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan speaks of Bridges in '[[Encroaching Control]]', claiming Bridges attempted to disrupt the Screen Actor's Guild (of which Reagan has been president) and reorganize the Guild into a union.

<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Additional details are be found in his 1957 [[Eureka College Commencement]] speech:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''It was some time later, under the guise of a jurisdictional strike involving a dispute between two unions, that we saw war come to [[Hollywood]]. Suddenly there were 5,000 tin-hatted, club-carrying pickets outside the studio gates. We saw some of our people caught by these hired henchmen; we saw them open car doors and put their arms across them and break them until they hung straight down the side of the car, and then these tin-hatted men would send our people on into the studio. We saw our so-called glamour girls, who certainly had to be conscious of what a scar on the face or a broken nose could mean career-wise going through those picket lines day after day without complaint. Nor did they falter when they found the bus which they used for transportation to and from work in flames from a bomb that had been thrown into it just before their arrival. Two blocks from the studio everyone would get down on hands and knees on the floor to avoid the bricks and stones coming through the windows. And the 5,000 pickets out there in their tin hats weren't even motion picture workers. They were maritime workers from the waterfront members of Mr. Harry Bridges' union.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>''We won our fight in [[Hollywood]], cleared them out after seven long months in which even homes were broken, months in which many of us carried arms that were granted us by the police, and in which policemen lived in our homes, guarding our children at night. And what of the quiet film technician who had left our town before the fighting started? Well, in 1951 he turned up on the Monterey Peninsula where he was involved in a union price-fixing conspiracy. Two years ago he appeared on the New York waterfront where he was Harry Bridges' right hand man in an attempt to establish a liaison between the New York and West Coast waterfront workers. And a few months ago he was mentioned in the speech of a U.S. Congresswoman who was thanking him for his help in framing labor legislation. He is a registered lobbyist in Washington for Harry Bridges.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
The union dispute mentioned was between the Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Machine Operators (IATSE) and the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU). The CSU was being supported by members of the [[communism|communist]] Party and [[communism|communist]] unions, including Bridges, who had worked with [[wikipedia:Herbert_Sorrell|Herbert Sorrell]] (head of the CSU) in Oakland years before.

The violence mentioned could be a reference to October 5, 1945, also known as [[wikipedia:Hollywood_Black_Friday|Hollywood Black Friday]], on which tempers flared outside the Warner Brothers studio gate. Up to 1000 people on both sides (studio officials, replacement workers, police and striking union members) clashed.

Reagan mentions "threats of acid in the face of our performers" and according to several sources, this was a first-hand threat he received via phone while filming the movie ''Night Upon Night.''

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Harry_Bridges|Harry Bridges]]

[http://keywiki.org/index.php/Harry_Bridges Harry Bridges ''(KeyWiki, associated with Trevor Loudon's New Zeal blog)'']

[http://law.jrank.org/pages/3006/Hollywood-Ten-Trials-1948-50-Hollywood-Divided-into-Two-Camps.html Hollywood Ten Trials: 1948-50 - Hollywood Divided Into Two Camps]

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14743892.2010.533876 American communist History Volume 9, Issue 3, 2010]

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/reaganswar.htm Excerpt from Reagan's War by Peter Schweizer mentioning ties between Bridges and Sorrell]

Harry Bridges

2026-08-26T15:10:23Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]]
Harry Bridges was an Australian-American union leader who frequently associated himself with [[Communism]]. He was part of numerous unions over the course of his life, but is best known as the leader of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Longshoremen%27s_Association International Longshoremen's Association].

Attempts to deport Bridges based on his communist ties were made, but were never successful due to insufficient evidence. In 1994, 4 years after his death, evidence was found of his leadership role in the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA.

== Speech Relevance ==
Reagan speaks of Bridges in '[[Encroaching Control]]', claiming Bridges attempted to disrupt the Screen Actor's Guild (of which Reagan has been president) and reorganize the Guild into a union.

<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Additional details are be found in his 1957 [[Eureka College Commencement]] speech:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''It was some time later, under the guise of a jurisdictional strike involving a dispute between two unions, that we saw war come to [[Hollywood]]. Suddenly there were 5,000 tin-hatted, club-carrying pickets outside the studio gates. We saw some of our people caught by these hired henchmen; we saw them open car doors and put their arms across them and break them until they hung straight down the side of the car, and then these tin-hatted men would send our people on into the studio. We saw our so-called glamour girls, who certainly had to be conscious of what a scar on the face or a broken nose could mean career-wise going through those picket lines day after day without complaint. Nor did they falter when they found the bus which they used for transportation to and from work in flames from a bomb that had been thrown into it just before their arrival. Two blocks from the studio everyone would get down on hands and knees on the floor to avoid the bricks and stones coming through the windows. And the 5,000 pickets out there in their tin hats weren't even motion picture workers. They were maritime workers from the waterfront members of Mr. Harry Bridges' union.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>''We won our fight in [[Hollywood]], cleared them out after seven long months in which even homes were broken, months in which many of us carried arms that were granted us by the police, and in which policemen lived in our homes, guarding our children at night. And what of the quiet film technician who had left our town before the fighting started? Well, in 1951 he turned up on the Monterey Peninsula where he was involved in a union price-fixing conspiracy. Two years ago he appeared on the New York waterfront where he was [[Harry Bridges]]' right hand man in an attempt to establish a liaison between the New York and West Coast waterfront workers. And a few months ago he was mentioned in the speech of a U.S. Congresswoman who was thanking him for his help in framing labor legislation. He is a registered lobbyist in Washington for Harry Bridges.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
The union dispute mentioned was between the Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Machine Operators (IATSE) and the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU). The CSU was being supported by members of the [[communism|communist]] Party and [[communism|communist]] unions, including Bridges, who had worked with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Sorrell|Herbert Sorrell] (head of the CSU) in Oakland years before.

The violence mentioned could be a reference to October 5, 1945, also known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Black_Friday Hollywood Black Friday], on which tempers flared outside the Warner Brothers studio gate. Up to 1000 people on both sides (studio officials, replacement workers, police and striking union members) clashed.

Reagan mentions "threats of acid in the face of our performers" and according to several sources, this was a first-hand threat he received via phone while filming the movie ''Night Upon Night.''

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Harry_Bridges|Harry Bridges]]

[http://keywiki.org/index.php/Harry_Bridges Harry Bridges ''(KeyWiki, associated with Trevor Loudon's New Zeal blog)'']

[http://law.jrank.org/pages/3006/Hollywood-Ten-Trials-1948-50-Hollywood-Divided-into-Two-Camps.html Hollywood Ten Trials: 1948-50 - Hollywood Divided Into Two Camps]

[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14743892.2010.533876 American communist History Volume 9, Issue 3, 2010]

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/reaganswar.htm Excerpt from Reagan's War by Peter Schweizer mentioning ties between Bridges and Sorrell]

Kremlin

2026-08-26T15:09:09Z

Reagan admin:

The Kremlin is the name given to the Moscow building complex which held the Russian/Soviet Union Presidency. Sometimes the term may be used to refer to the government in general (in the same way one might refer to the 'White House' and mean the government of the United States). Generically, a kremlin is actually any major fortified complex found in a Russian city. Many cities, therefore, have kremlins.

== Speech Relevance ==
The Kremlin is referred to one time, in '[[Encroaching Control]]'.
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Kremlin|Kremlin]]

Grover Cleveland

2026-08-26T14:53:57Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]][[Category:President]]
Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, the first President to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was a pro-business Democrat (i.e. fiscally conservative).

== Speech Relevance ==
While discussing [[Al Smith]] in '[[A Time For Choosing]]' Reagan states:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and Cleveland down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Cleveland was notorious for vetoing bills. The most famous of his vetoes was of the Texas Seed Bill. It was a $10,000 appropriation of funds to purchase seed for a drought-ravaged section of Texas. Cleveland included this message in his veto:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the [[Constitution]], and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Grover_Cleveland|Grover Cleveland]]

[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cleveland%27s_Veto_of_the_Texas_Seed_Bill Texas Seed Bill Veto, Full Text]

Grover Cleveland

2026-08-26T14:53:26Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]][[Category:President]]
Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was a pro-business Democrat (i.e. fiscally conservative).

== Speech Relevance ==
While discussing [[Al Smith]] in '[[A Time For Choosing]]' Reagan states:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and Cleveland down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Cleveland was notorious for vetoing bills. The most famous of his vetoes was of the Texas Seed Bill. It was a $10,000 appropriation of funds to purchase seed for a drought-ravaged section of Texas. Cleveland included this message in his veto:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the [[Constitution]], and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Grover_Cleveland|Grover Cleveland]]

[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cleveland%27s_Veto_of_the_Texas_Seed_Bill Texas Seed Bill Veto, Full Text]

Andrew Jackson

2026-08-26T14:52:46Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]][[Category:President]]
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States. He was too young to fight in the Revolution, instead volunteering to be a courier. He served in the military during the War of 1812 and is best known in that war for his victory at the Battle of New Orleans (which was technically fought after the end of the war).

He is one of the most divisive Presidents in terms of how he is viewed. He abolished the National Bank, paid off the national debt but he also created what became known as the Trail of Tears when he relocated mass numbers of American Indians from the Southeast United States.

== Speech Relevance ==

Jackson is mentioned briefly in '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], Jackson, and [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]] down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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 [[Labour Party|labor socialist party]] of England.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
== Source Links ==

[[wikipedia:Andrew_Jackson|Andrew Jackson]]

Thomas Jefferson

2026-08-26T14:52:03Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]][[Category:President]]
Thomas Jefferson was one of the United States Founding Fathers. He was the primary writer of the Declaration of Independence, served as President, Vice-President, Secretary of State and Ambassador to France for the fledgling Federal government.

Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party (also called the Jeffersonian-Democratic Party) was formed in response to the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton. They favored a small-government view and a strict interpretation of the Constitution, particularly Article 1 (the powers of the federal government). Starting in 1800, with Jefferson's election to the presidency, and running through the next 2 presidents, [[James Madison]] and James Monroe, this Democratic-Republican Party held strong control of the government.

== Speech Relevance ==
Jefferson is mentioned once, briefly, in '[[A Time For Choosing]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of Jefferson, [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]] down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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 [[Labour Party|labor socialist party]] of England.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
And again, in '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Thomas Jefferson said, "If we let Washington tell us when to sow and when to reap, the nation shall soon want for bread."''</BLOCKQUOTE>

This line is pulled from Jefferson's autobiography:
<blockquote>''"Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."''</blockquote>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Thomas_Jefferson|Thomas Jefferson]]

Al Smith

2026-08-26T14:51:07Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]][[Category:Politician]]
Al Smith was New York governor for 4 terms and ran for President in 1928, losing to [[wikipedia:Herbert_Hoover|Herbert Hoover]].

During his presidential bid, strong attacks were leveled against him because he was Catholic. He was, in fact, the first Catholic Presidential nominee. There was concern that he would answer to the Vatican instead of following the Constitution. Some took this fear so far as to believe that the Pope would pack up the Vatican and move it to Washington DC. A joke that appeared after the election was that Smith sent a one-word telegram to the pope upon his loss, saying "Unpack." The United States would not overcome its fears for thirty years, when it elected Catholic John F. Kennedy.

==Speech Relevance ==
In '[[A Time For Choosing]]', Reagan says:

<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]] down the road under the banners of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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 [[Labour Party|labor socialist party]] of England.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

Reagan is talking about a speech given on January 25, 1936 in Washington DC. It has since gone on to be called the ''Betrayal of the Democratic Party''. The speech can be found in its entirety in the Appendices of the book ''The Naked Capitalist''.

The exact quote from the speech Reagan is paraphrasing is as follows:

<BLOCKQUOTE>''Now, it is all right with me. It is all right to me if they want to disguise themselves as [[Norman Thomas]] or [[Karl Marx]], or [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], or any of the rest of that bunch, but what I won't stand for is to let them march under the banner of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], or [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]].''</BLOCKQUOTE>

Smith did run as a democrat for his governor and presidential candidate. It wasn't until after the 1932 that he seemed to sour on the democratic party. He actually campaigned for the Republicans in 1936 and 1940.

==Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Al_Smith|Al Smith]]

[http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsmithA.htm Al Smith: A Biography]

[http://soquelbythecreek.blogspot.com/2011/01/former-democratic-party-candidate-for.html Blog containing the Betrayal of the Democratic Party speech]

Karl Marx

2026-08-26T14:49:53Z

Reagan admin:

[[Category:Person]]
Karl Marx was a German philosopher who is often viewed as a father to [[socialism]] and [[communism]].

== Speech Relevance ==
Since both '[[A Time For Choosing]]' and '[[Encroaching Control]]' discuss the conflict between capitalism and communism, Marx's relevance and influence can be viewed throughout the speeches, however, he is only mentioned by name once in '[[A Time For Choosing]]', when Reagan describes the words of [[Al Smith]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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 part of [[Thomas Jefferson|Jefferson]], [[Andrew Jackson|Jackson]], and [[Grover Cleveland|Cleveland]] down the road under the banners of Marx, [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]], and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned to 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 [[Labour Party|labor socialist party]] of England.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
Marx is mentioned several times in '[[Encroaching Control]]':
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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. [[Vladimir Lenin|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."''</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Last November, the communist parties of 81 countries held a [[Moscow Conference of 1960|convention in Moscow]] and again they reaffirmed this principle of Marx that it was war to the death.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[[wikipedia:Karl_Marx|Karl Marx]]

Karl Marx

2026-08-26T14:48:48Z

Reagan admin:

Kerr-Mills Bill

2026-08-26T14:42:34Z

Reagan admin:

The Kerr-Mills Bill was, in some ways, a compromise on the creation of a Federal health insurance system. Instead of mandatory enrollment for anyone on [[Social Security]], like [[Medicare]], the Kerr-Mills Bill provided funds to the states to compensate for those who could not afford private insurance. The bills sponsors were Senator [[wikipedia:Robert_S._Kerr|Robert S. Kerr]] and Congressman [[wikipedia:Wilbur_Mills|Wilbur Mills]].

It was also known as the Medical Assistance for the Aged Act. [https://medicaiddirectors.org/resource/why-did-they-do-it-that-way-medicaid-financing/ Aspects of its structure] were used when developing [[wikipedia:Medicaid|Medicaid]].

== Speech Relevance ==
The Kerr-Mills Bill is discussed in both '[[Encroaching Control]]' and [[Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine]].

== Source Links ==
[http://www.haciendapub.com/annis.html Towards Socialized Medicine: A Historic Chronology]

Kerr-Mills Bill

2026-08-26T14:42:09Z

Reagan admin:

The Kerr-Mills Bill was, in some ways, a compromise on the creation of a Federal health insurance system. Instead of mandatory enrollment for anyone on [[Social Security]], like [[Medicare]], the Kerr-Mills Bill provided funds to the states to compensate for those who could not afford private insurance. The bills sponsors were Senator [[wikipedia:Robert_S._Kerr|Robert S. Kerr]] and Congressman [[wikipedia:Wilbur_Mills|Wilbur Mills]].

It was also known as the Medical Assistance for the Aged Act. [https://medicaiddirectors.org/resource/why-did-they-do-it-that-way-medicaid-financing/ Aspects of its structure] were used when developing [[wikipedia:Medicaid]].

== Speech Relevance ==
The Kerr-Mills Bill is discussed in both '[[Encroaching Control]]' and [[Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine]].

== Source Links ==
[http://www.haciendapub.com/annis.html Towards Socialized Medicine: A Historic Chronology]

King bill

2026-08-26T14:17:27Z

Reagan admin:

The King Bill, also known as the King-Anderson Bill, was a precursor to Medicare. It was presented and defeated (in the Senate) in 1962. [[Cecil R King]] and [[Clinton Anderson]] were the primary sponsors of the bill. It is believed that the King-Anderson Bill was simply a rehash of the defeated [[Forand Bill]], who's sponsor, [[Aime Forand]] had not been re-elected.

== Speech Relevance ==
The King-Anderson Bill is never mentioned by name in '[[Encroaching Control]]' but it is possible Reagan is speaking of it when he refers to the "other program":
<BLOCKQUOTE>''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.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
However, King-Anderson is mentioned in [[Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine]]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Now Congressman [[Aime Forand|Forand]] is no longer a Congressman of the United States government. He has been replaced, not in the particular assignment, but in his backing of such a bill by Congressman King of California. It is presented in the idea of a great emergency that millions of our senior citizens are unable to provide needed medical care. But this ignores the fact that in the last decade 127 million of our citizens, in just 10 years, have come under the protection of some form of privately owned medical or hospital insurance.''</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>''Now the advocates of this bill when you try to oppose it challenge you on an emotional basis and say, "What would you do? Throw these poor people out to die with no medical attention?"''</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>''That's ridiculous and of course no one is advocating it. As a matter of fact, in the last session of Congress a bill was adopted known as the [[Kerr-Mills Bill]]. Now without even allowing this bill to be tried to see if it works, they have introduced this King bill, which is really the [[Forand Bill]].''</BLOCKQUOTE>

== Source Links ==
[http://www.aapsonline.org/brochures/persuasi.htm Medicare and the King-Anderson Bill]