Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace
and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free– if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending–if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained–we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable–and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace– but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
I am not exactly sure where on Canobie Lake this photograph is taken from but I’m guessing it is near where the town of Salem Water Department station is today. The shore on the right would be Policy Street in Salem with the Windham shore in the left background.
Does anybody remember this miniature steam railroad located in Salem NH? I asked my parents who are in their nineties. My mom and dad said they remembered it on Route 28 near Winmills (where Mckinnons is today). My mom said she even road on it, stopping on the way to her family’s camp on Cobbett’s Pond. My dad said it was near the “Sunshine Inn.”
Yuri Besmenov: A Prophet from the Soviet Union : 1984
Yuri Bezmenov was a member of the elite propaganda arm of the KGB, known as the Novasti Press Agency. This interview, was conducted by G. Edward Griffin, in 1984 about the four stages of subversion: “Oh, yes. I’m trying to tell you that it has to be stopped unless you want to end up in the Gulag system and enjoy all the advantages of socialist equality: working for free, catching fleas on your body, sleeping on the planks of plywood — in Alaska this time, I guess — that’s where Americans will belong. Unless they will wake up….”
“…Just sit down, look at your navel and meditate. And things, due to some strange logic, due to cosmic vibration, will settle down by themselves. This is exactly what the KGB and Marxist–Leninist propaganda wants from Americans: to distract their opinion, attention, and mental energy from real issues of United States into non-issues, into a non-world, non-existent harmony. Obviously, it’s more beneficial for the Soviet (China today, with reverse opium war) aggressors to have a bunch of duped Americans than Americans who are self-conscious, healthy, physically fit, and alert to reality…” Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate, overt, and open. You can see it with your own eyes… But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15 percent of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85 percent is a slow process, which we call either ideological subversion or “active measures” — aktivnye meropriyatiya in the language of the KGB — or psychological warfare. What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country. It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow, and it’s divided into four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. It takes from fifteen to twenty years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy. Exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism–Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism. The result, the result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the ’60s, drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their minds. Even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words, these people — the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To rid society of these people you need another twenty years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded, common-sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of the United States society…Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they see in the future what the beautiful society of equality and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy, frustrated people. And the Marxist–Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. They obviously they will join the ranks of dissenters, dissidents. Unlike in the present
United States, there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist–Leninist America…”
“In the future, these people will be simply squashed like cockroaches. Nobody is going to pay them nothing for their beautiful, noble ideas of equality. This they don’t understand and it will be a great shock for them, of course. The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already. For the last twenty-five years — actually, it’s over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to a lack of moral standards. As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures…he will refuse to believe it — until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When the military boot crushes his balls, then he will understand — but not before that. That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization. So basically, America is stuck with demoralization. And even if you start right now, here, this minute, you start educating a new generation of Americans. It will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism. The next stage is destabilization. This time the subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption. Whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby, doesn’t matter anymore. This time, and it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a nation, what matters is essentials: economy, foreign relations, and defense systems. And you can see quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and economy, the influence of Marxist–Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely fantastic. I could never believe it fourteen years ago when I landed in this part of the world that the progress would go that fast. The next stage, of course, is crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis…And after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure, and economy, you have the so-called period of normalization. It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in ‘68, Comrade Brezhnev said, “Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized.” This is what will happen in the United States if you allow all these schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kinds of goodies and the paradise on Earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put a Big Brother government in Washington, D.C…Never mind. They will create false illusions that the situation is under control. The situation is not under control, the situation is disgustingly out of control. Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system train another generation of people who think they are living in peace time. False. The United States is in the state of war — undeclared, total war against the basic principles and the foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not Comrade Andropov, of course. It’s the system, however ridiculous it may sound. The world communist system or the world communist conspiracy. Whether I scare some people or not, I don’t give a hoot. If you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you. But you don’t have to be paranoid about it….Unlike myself, you have literally several years to live on unless the United States wakes up. The time bomb is ticking. With every second, the disaster is coming closer and closer. Unlike myself, you will have nowhere to defect to…This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility…”
…Well, the immediate thing that comes to my mind is, of course, there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, number one. Number two, to explain to them, the real danger of socialist, communist — whatever — welfare state, big brother government. If people fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help the United States. You may kiss goodbye to your freedom, including freedoms to homosexuals, to prison inmates — all this freedom will vanish, evaporate in five seconds. Including your precious lives. The second thing… At the moment, at least part of the United States population is convinced that the danger is real. They have to force their government — and I’m not talking about sending letters, signing petitions, and all this beautiful, noble activity — I am talking about forcing the United States government to stop aiding communism because there is no other problem more burning and urgent than to stop the Soviet military–industrial complex from destroying whatever is left of the free world. And it is very easy to do. No credits, no technology, no money, no political or diplomatic recognition. And of course, no such idiocy as grain deals to USSR. The Soviet people, 270 millions of Soviets, will be eternally thankful to you if you stop aiding a bunch of murderers who sit now in the Kremlin and whom President Reagan respectfully calls “government.” They do not govern anything, least of all such complexity as the Soviet economy. So basic… Two very simple — maybe too simplistic answers or solutions — but nevertheless they are the only solutions. Educate yourself, understand what is going on around you. You are not living in a time of peace. You are in a state of war and you have precious little time to save yourself. You don’t have much time, especially if you are talking about young generation. There is not much time left for convulsions and sexual masturbation to the beautiful disco music. Very soon it will go, just overnight. If we are talking about capitalists or wealthy businessmen, I think they are selling the rope on which they will hang very soon. If they don’t stop it — they cannot curb their insatiable desire for profit — and if they keep on trading with the monster of Soviet (Chinese) communism, they are going to hang very soon. And they will pray to be killed. But unfortunately they will be sent to Alaska, probably to manage an industry of slaves. It’s simplistic. I know it sounds unpleasant. I know Americans don’t like to listen to things which are unpleasant, but I have defected not to tell you the stories about such idiocy as microfilm James Bond-type espionage. This is garbage. You don’t need any espionage anymore. I have come to talk about survival. It’s a question of survival of this system. You may ask me, what is in it for me. Survival, obviously. Because as I said, I am now in your boat. If we sing together, we’ll sing beautifully together. There is no other place on this planet to defect to.
Cows in Windham were once a ubiquitous site, but no longer. The photograph above is of cows at the Nesmith farm on North Lowell Road. The last farm that had cows was at Johnson’s. It seems that they’re developing ways to put MRNA into the food supply along with other fun additives as well…no kidding! Apparently it is already in the pork, headed to beef and will eventually be knitted into your lettuce. Oh, yum! So I’ve become a devotee of locally sourced food and I’ve found a good plug. I am not getting anything for this promotion other than helping a local farmer. Shaw Farm Dairy sells milk from their own cows in Dracut MA. Best of all they offer local delivery to Windham. You get one of those neat metal boxes for your door stoop, order online and they deliver in reusable glass bottles. For you environmental luddites, they also sell milk in plastic but it just doesn’t feel right to me. The milk is delicious and certified organic!!! They also sell eggs, butter and other interesting food products. I’ve also found a plug for a quarter share of local meat. You can too. So even Republicans can be Green and stay healthy at the same time! https://shawfarm.com/or you can purchase at their farm store 8 miles away at: 204 New Boston Road, Dracut MA.
Lakeview farm was in the Dinsmoor family for many years. The original homestead was built in 1736. Joseph W. Dinsmoor operated a lush and profitable orchard on the property. His sister built the beautiful Victorian house across from the original homestead which she operated as a boarding house for many years. The Walkey family purchased the property and operated Lakeview Golf Course here. It was nine hole course and was popular with summer and town residents.
This is how Cobbett’s Pond Road looked over a hundred years ago, a narrow lane, hugging the shore of the lake. It’s a pretty view, but it is really best not to stare at it while driving! And please, for the love of God, take your face out of your screens for the few seconds you traverse this road. That’s possible right? I travel this road most every day, and several times a month I am literally run off the road by a car approaching me on the wrong side of the yellow line. I try to get out of their way, but there is no place to go. Most times the horn awakens the other driver from their mesmerized trance. This is too beautiful place to watch your life pass in front of your face and to float above your corpse. Please, drive slow and keep your eyes on the road. Thanking you in advance. Postcard courtesy of Gary Eberhardt.
To my good friend and great Republican, Dick Nixon, and your charming wife, Pat; my running mate and that wonderful Republican who has served us well for so long, Bill Miller and his wife, Stephanie; to Thurston Morton who has done such a commendable job in chairmaning this Convention; to Mr. Herbert Hoover, who I hope is watching; and to that great American and his wife, General and Mrs. Eisenhower; to my own wife, my family, and to all of my fellow Republicans here assembled, and Americans across this great Nation.
From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together, dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man. Together we will win.
I accept your nomination with a deep sense of humility. I accept, too, the responsibility that goes with it, and I seek your continued help and your continued guidance. My fellow Republicans, our cause is too great for any man to feel worthy of it. Our task would be too great for any man, did he not have with him the heart and the hands of this great Republican Party, and I promise you tonight that every fiber of my being is consecrated to our cause; that nothing shall be lacking from the struggle that can be brought to it by enthusiasm, by devotion, and plain hard work. In this world no person, no party can guarantee anything, but what we can do and what we shall do is to deserve victory, and victory will be ours.
The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free-not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of communism.
Now, my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom. Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return to proven ways– not because they are old, but because they are true. We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom – freedom made orderly for this nation by our constitutional government; freedom under a government limited by laws of nature and of nature’s God; freedom – balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the slavery of the prison cell; balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.
Now, we Americans understand freedom. We have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This Nation and its people are freedom’s model in a searching world. We can be freedom’s missionaries in a doubting world. But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew freedom’s mission in our own hearts and in our own homes.
During four futile years, the administration which we shall replace has distorted and lost that faith. It has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom. Now, failures cement the wall of shame in Berlin. Failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs. Failures mark the slow death of freedom in Laos. Failures infest the jungles of Vietnam. And failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations – the NATO community. Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening wills, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses. Because of this administration we are tonight a world divided – we are a Nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.
Rather than useful jobs in our country, people have been offered bureaucratic “make work,” rather than moral leadership, they have been given bread and circuses, spectacles, and, yes, they have even been given scandals. Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elders and there is a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives. Where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.
Now, certainly, simple honesty is not too much to demand of men in government. We find it in most. Republicans demand it from everyone. They demand it from everyone no matter how exalted or protected his position might be. The growing menace in our country tonight, to personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches, on the playgrounds, and places of business, particularly in our great cities, is the mounting concern, or should be, of every thoughtful citizen in the United States.
Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us – demonstrates that nothing – nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.
Now, we Republicans see all this as more, much more, than the rest: of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny. Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will, and this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
Fellow Republicans, it is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. And, so help us God, that is exactly what a Republican president will do with the help of a Republican Congress.
It is further the cause of Republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. It is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the illusion that a world of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve itself into a world of harmony, if we just don’t rock the boat or irritate the forces of aggression – and this is hogwash.
It is further the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves, and the world, that only the strong can remain free, that only the strong can keep the peace.
Now, I needn’t remind you, or my fellow Americans regardless of party, that Republicans have shouldered this hard responsibility and marched in this cause before. It was Republican leadership under Dwight Eisenhower that kept the peace, and passed along to this administration the mightiest arsenal for defense the world has ever known. And I needn’t remind you that it was the strength and the unbelievable will of the Eisenhower years that kept the peace by using our strength, by using it in the Formosa Straits and in Lebanon and by showing it courageously at all times.
It was during those Republican years that the thrust of Communist imperialism was blunted. It was during those years of Republican leadership that this world moved closer, not to war, but closer to peace, than at any other time in the three decades just passed.
And I needn’t remind you – but I will – that it’s been during Democratic years that our strength to deter war has stood still, and even gone into a planned decline. It has been during Democratic years that we have weakly stumbled into conflict, timidly refusing to draw our own lines against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our people of our full participation, and tragically, letting our finest men die on battlefields (unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride or the prospect of victory).
Yesterday it was Korea. Tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones of this. Don’t try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of our forces, refuses to say – refuses to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is victory. And his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by.
And I needn’t remind you, but I will; it has been during Democratic years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and their fate cynically sealed.
Today in our beloved country we have an administration which seems eager to deal with communism in every coin known – from gold to wheat, from consulates to confidence, and even human freedom itself.
The Republican cause demands that we brand communism as a principal disturber of peace in the world today. Indeed, we should brand it as the only significant disturber of the peace, and we must make clear that until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced and its rejections with all nations tempered, communism and the governments it now controls are enemies of every man on earth who is or wants to be free.
We here in America can keep the peace only if we remain vigilant and only if we remain strong. Only if we keep our eyes open and keep our guard up can we prevent war. And I want to make this abundantly clear – I don’t intend to let peace or freedom be torn from our grasp because of lack of strength or lack of will – and that I promise you Americans.
I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world. This is a goal far, far more meaningful than a moon shot.
It’s a truly inspiring goal for all free men to set for themselves during the latter half of the twentieth century. I can also see – and all free men must thrill to – the events of this Atlantic civilization joined by its great ocean highway to the United States. What a destiny, what a destiny can be ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe, the Americans and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the Pacific. I can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour. But we pledge – we pledge that human sympathy – what our neighbors to the South call that attitude of “simpatico” – no less than enlightened self’-interest will be our guide.
I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and guiding emergent nations everywhere.
I know this freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our own freedom was achieved through centuries, by unremitting efforts by brave and wise men. I know that the road to freedom is a long and a challenging road. I know also that some men may walk away from it, that some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmental paternalism.
And I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will extend its hand in health, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all new nations will be at least encouraged to go our way, so that they will not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or to the dead-end streets of collectivism. My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service by hiding freedom’s light under a bushel of mistaken humility.
I seek an American proud of its past, proud of its ways, proud of its dreams, and determined actively to proclaim them. But our example to the world must, like charity, begin at home.
In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there must be room for deliberation of the energy and talent of the individual – otherwise our vision is blind at the outset.
We must assure a society here which, while never abandoning the needy or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunity for the creative and the productive. We must know the whole good is the product of many single contributions.
I cherish a day when our children once again will restore as heroes the sort of men and women who – unafraid and undaunted – pursue the truth, strive to cure disease, subdue and make fruitful our natural environment and produce the inventive engines of production, science, and technology.
This Nation, whose creative people have enhanced this entire span of history, should again thrive upon the greatness of all those things which we, as individual citizens, can and should do. During Republican years, this again will be a nation of men and women, of families proud of their role, jealous of their responsibilities, unlimited in their aspirations – a Nation where all who can will be self-reliant.
We Republicans see in our constitutional form of government the great framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the whole man, and we see the whole ma
n as the great reason for instituting orderly government in the first place.
We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone’s life for him – we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.
We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate, encouraging a free and a competitive economy and enforcing law and order. Thus do we seek inventiveness, diversity, and creativity within a stable order, for we Republicans define government’s role where needed at many, many levels, preferably through the one closest to the people involved.
Our towns and our cities, then our counties, then our states, then our regional contacts – and only then, the national government. That, let me remind you, is the ladder of liberty, built by decentralized power. On it also we must have balance between the branches of government at every level.
Balance, diversity, creativity – these are the elements of Republican equation. Republicans agree, Republicans agree heartily to disagree on many, many of their applications, but we have never disagreed on the basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans.
This is a party, this Republican Party, a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.
Back in 1858 Abraham Lincoln said this of the Republican party – and I quote him, because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: “It was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements” in 1858. Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount objective: To arrest the progress of slavery, and place it in the course of ultimate extinction.
Today, as then, but more urgently and more broadly than then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength. Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don’t expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore and revitalize, the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.
Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals.
This Party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.
I repeat, I accept your nomination with humbleness, with pride, and you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land. Thank you.
The following is the text of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 speech at the 28th Republican National Convention, accepting the nomination for president. Provided by the Arizona Historical Foundation
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