Man
is not free unless government is limited...as government
expands, liberty contracts.
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate
barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
...outside of its
legitimate function, government does nothing as well as the
private sector.
We don't have a trillion-dollar
debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar
debt because we spend too much.
Government
growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming
shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to
crush the very roots of our freedom...
Freedom is the right to
question and change the established way of doing things. It
is the continuous revolution of the marketplace.
It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings
and seek solutions.
...growth, prosperity and ultimately human
fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government
down.
There are no such
things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on
the human capacity for intelligence, imagination
and wonder.
...government does not produce freedom. People...take
freedom from government, and they must continue to struggle
to keep it.
The
Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy
without controlling people. And they knew when a government
sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve
its
purposes.
Freedom is not something to be secured in any one
moment in time... And freedom is never more than one generation
from
extinction.
It
is up to us...so that our grandchildren, when they look back
at us, can truly say that we not only preserved the flame of
freedom, but cast its warmth and light further than those who
came before us.
There is no question that we have failed to
live up to the dreams of the founding fathers many times and
in many places...But
all
in all, the one thing we must be on guard against is thinking
that because of this, the system has failed. The system has
not failed. Some human beings have failed the system.
Will you resist
the temptation to get a government handout...Recognize that
government invasion of public power is eventually an assault
on your own business...recognize that you are just feeding
the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.Our natural unalienable
rights
are now presumed to be a dispensation of government, divisible
by a vote of the majority...we have certain rights which cannot
be infringed upon, even if the individual stands outvoted by
all of his fellow citizens. Without this recognition, majority
rule is nothing more than mob rule.
It's time we asked ourselves
if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding
Fathers...This is the issue...Whether
we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we
abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual
elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better
than we can plan them ourselves.
...we have been tempted to believe
that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule,
that government by an elite
group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But
if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who
among us has the capability to govern someone else?
Remember
Reagan's Vision Of Liberty
