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November 18, 2009
Ronald Reagan Speech - 1964 Republican National Convention
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Wild Thing's comment...........
I long to see such greatness in a leader again. I really miss President Reagan.
Great line from Reagan...
"We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind...and it's been said that if we lose this war, and in so doing, lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who have the most to lose did the least to prevent it from happening."
Today that enemy is two-fold. Terrorism and liberalism. The time of "doing nothing" is over. Conservatives need to fight back, and hard.
Interestingi how something said over 44 years ago can be so revelant today. This speech is one for the ages. And the battle he asked us to join, is not yet over. God bless Ronald Reagan.
And in it we find wisdom from the past:
” Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we 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.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ‘round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it’s a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said that “the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits—not animals.” And he said, “There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Thank you very much. “
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at November 18, 2009 05:45 AM
Comments
Ronald Reagan, absolutely the best. I have heard this speech several times and it applies even more today. What he warned about the Democrats and big government have come to be. His warning about not fighting to win in Vietnam came true. When he became president he held true to his anti communist stance and we prevailed. If only we could have another like him.
Posted by: TomR at November 18, 2009 11:42 AM
