Election 2008: A Time For Choosing

“A Time for Choosing"

While We Still have a Choice

Watch Video from Ronald Reagan

by Robert L. Rosebrock, U.S. Vietnam Veteran

In 1964, during a series of stump speeches that included a major televised address, Ronald Reagan gave what became known as “The Speech” on behalf of Barry Goldwater, then Republican presidential candidate and then senior Senator from Arizona.

Reagan’s speech was officially titled "A Time For Choosing," and it’s prophetic message bears a remarkable parallel of today’s presidential challenge with another Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, the senior Senator from Arizona. 

Just as Reagan’s speech then forewarned about the dangerous direction that the Democratic Party was trying to advance socialism in the United States, so it is with today’s Democratic Party, only much more serious.

Reagan’s prophetic forewarning could now become reality if American voters follow the destructive path of “change” that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the freshman Senator from Illinois, wants to confiscate what is rightfully yours and give it to someone that he prefers over you. This elitist attitude is a scary reminder of the Russian Communist leader Nikita Krushev’s infamous quote:  “What’s our is ours, and what’s yours is negotiable.”

Democracy or Socialism
At the heart of this 2008 presidential election is whether or not America will continue on the course of greatness as a free Republic with self-governing individuals or to “change” America toward socialism and be collectively controlled by they state.

The difference and choices are distinct: Democracy’s mission is to liberate the masses and keep the individual free and independent, whereas socialism’s objective is to dominate the individual and keep everyone under control as a collective mass.

French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859, the author of “Democracy in America,” described the difference as: “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality.  But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

Reagan’s Speech: “This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

“Last February at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-time candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." Reagan concluded: “I think that’s exactly what he will do.”

And that’s the issue of today’s election as well, and exactly what Senator McCain must do as President, if nothing else, to stop the advancement of Socialism in America.

“Al Smith, Mr. Democrat”
Both Senators Obama and McCain recently displayed great wit and humor at the 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner in New York. It’s important to note how Reagan spoke about Al Smith in “The Speech” of 1964.

Reagan’s Speech:  “As a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn’t the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration. Back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his party was taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his party, and he never returned 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.

Socialism in Liberalism Clothing
Al Smith’s charge against the Democratic Party forced him to make the “choice” of permanently leaving because of its direction toward Socialism. This is a serious reminder as to why “lifetime” Democrats need to look deeply into today’s liberal party before making their “choice” on November 4th.

Norman Thomas was the Socialist Party’s perennial presidential nominee and he infamously declared: “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

The “L” Word has become the “S” Word
When debating Governor George Dukakis in the 1988 Presidential campaign, George H. W. Bush challenged Dukakis with “Do I dare say the ‘L’ word” (Liberal), to describe Dukakis’s far-left politics. After all, America was prospering after eight years of Ronald Reagan Conservatism, which included the conversion of Reagan Democrats that gave him a 49-state landslide victory in 1984.  Thus, liberalism was then considered an extreme and unacceptable form of governance that was contrary to a majority of America’s citizenry.

However, with the dumbing down of our pubic school system where students are taught “what” to think instead of “how” to think, consider how far Liberalism has grown over the past two decades. In fact, today’s most liberal Senator is the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate and his running mate is the third most liberal in the U.S. Senate. 

The “C” Word
Today, McCain needs to challenge Obama by asking: “Do we dare say the “S” word (socialist). Because if doesn’t openly challenge Obama with it today, in a few years we may be forced to accept the “C” word (Communist).

In 1850, French economist Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law” was published, which argues against socialism and forewarns how it inevitably degenerates into communism, which Reagan also forewarned about in “The Speech.”

Reagan Speech: “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.”

Can anyone deny that we are not already weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically?

Krushev further declared: “We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."

John F. Kennedy, certainly a Democrat of a different mould from today’s liberal-socialists, including brother Teddy, declared on his own watch as President:  “I don’t think there is any American who wants it said that in the days of his generation, when he bore responsibility as a citizen, the power shifted from the free world to that of the Communist.”

“Change” We Don’t Need
Senator Obama’s campaign theme is “Change we need.” Shortly after garnering Colin Powell’s support, Senator Obama announced at a Fayetteville, North Carolina rally: "A great solider, a great statesman and a great American has endorsed our campaign to change America."

What “great American” would ever want to “change America” from its greatness? Remember Al Smith, the “great American” who left the Democratic Party because of this change toward socialism?

Founding Father John Adams, forewarned:  “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored.
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

Wasn’t the Declaration of Independence signed and the Revolutionary War fought for "change?"  After 232 years of freedom and democracy, why would anyone want to now "change" America?

Like millions upon millions of our "great fellow-Americans" who don’t want to change America, we must stop this dangerous mission toward "changing" democracy for socialism, which will certainly lead to the destruction of our great nation.

“Spreading the Wealth” is Legal Plunder
Make no mistake, one of the primary “changes” that Obama wants, which is to “spread the wealth around,” is certainly the foundation of changing toward Socialism. Bastiat explains this in “The Law” as legal plunder: “But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Obama is not alone in this mission to change toward socialism.  His Democratic rival in the Primary Election, Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton, told a group at a San Francisco fundraiser: "We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." And who can forget her socialist threat to the oil companies:  "I want to take those profits."

When government can choose how it “wants” to spend your hard earned money instead of you choosing how you “need” to spend, save and invest it, know that America will no longer be a “great country.”

Maxine the Marxist
During a recent congressional hearing with oil company executives, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters threatened John Hoffmeister, CEO of Shell Oil, with: “This liberal would be all about socializing ….. would be about basically taking over and the government running all of your companies.

Ted Hayes, the Republican candidate running against the avowed Socialist is serving his country well with the mission to “change” her hold on the 35th Congressional District and liberate his constituents from the serious threat of her oppressive collectivism.

Socialized Healthcare
In brief, universal healthcare equals universal misery, so be very careful what you ask for.  Writer P.J. O’Rouke forewarned, “If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until it’s free.” Nonetheless, Obama has promised “By the end of my first term as president, we can have universal health care in this country.”

Ronald Reagan understood the danger of such a change when he forewarned: “Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients.”

Socialized Transportation
America grew into its greatness by offering our citizenry the freedom of choice to become what we want, and to do what we want, so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others. Moreover, America grew into this unparalleled greatness because of the freedom of mobility and independence that the personal automobile has given to each one of us.

Make no mistake; we no longer live under stealth socialism that creeps up slowly as prophesied by Norman Thomas. Instead our independence and freedom of choices, including freedom of mobility, have already been stolen away and the cruel results of socialistic dictates are being painfully experienced.

This is evident when a solo-motorist chooses to drive alone in the car of his or her choice is punished by government and forced into oppressive gridlock, while the motorist who has a passenger or a motorist driving alone in a hybrid car is rewarded with special driving privileges on the free-flowing carpool lane.

Save the Environment and Lose Your Freedom
When government gets into the reward and punishment business of its citizenry based on those who obey its unilateral and unreasonable demands to “save the environment” by carpooling or driving a hybrid, as opposed to those who choose to be independent and drive alone in the car of their choice, know that you are already living under the dictates of socialism. 

When government rewards low-income bus riders with an exclusive “bus only lane” on Wilshire Boulevard in West Los Angeles and punishes middle-to-higher-income automobile drivers with oppressive gridlock because it wants everyone under the control of a one-size-fits-all “mass transportation” system, know that you are already living under socialism.  Thus this “change” that a President Obama wants to take is into a very, very dangerous territory.

“What happened to the Democratic Party?
It’s time for “lifelong” Democrats to take a serious look at their Party’s real agenda, just as Al Smith did in 1936. Accordingly, they must rightfully charge today’s leadership of taking the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. 

The “San Diego Union Tribune” recently wrote: “What happened to the Democratic Party? Just a few generations ago, the party of Franklin Roosevelt went to bat for the little guy, the common man, the everyday Joe the plumber. Not anymore. Now, the wealthy elites who run the Democratic Party have declared war on working-class Americans while pretending to defend them against greedy and heartless Republicans.

Those would be the same Republicans whose vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, doesn’t just talk about working-class people but actually embodies one and yet has been savaged by liberals. And those would be the same Republicans who have devised a tax plan that might just appeal to ‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher, the Ohio resident who dared to confront Barack Obama over the unfairness of his tax plan. In a candid moment that could well lose him some votes, Obama acknowledged to Wurzelbacher that he intended, if elected president, to take the wealth of those making more than 250,000 per year and ‘spread it around’ to others making less.

That wasn’t very smart, and the Obama campaign knows it. So they’re trying to change the subject by making Joe the Plumber the issue. They’re doing so, with a little help from their friends in the news media and labor unions, by digging into Joe’s background in search of something embarrassing … That will teach Joe to keep quiet.

Let’s hope the country learns a lesson as well—about what the Democratic Party used to be and what it has become.”

“A Time for Choosing”
Forty-four years ago, Ronald Reagan laid down what was at stake then when he summed the choice:  “We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."  Well, Lyndon Johnson was elected and the seeds of darkness were planted with his “Great Society.”  Fast-forward to today and Yogi Berra’s wisdom sums it up best: "It’s deja vu all over again.”

Take heed fellow Americans, and choose wisely while you still have a choice on November 4th. This choice is between the continued progress of freedom and independence through democracy, or changing toward more oppression of the individual and destruction of the American dream through dictatorial and collective control with deeper roots of Socialism that eventually grows into Communism.

When evaluating what could happen if you choose wrongly and allow government to take what is yours and give it to others, consider Aesop’s Fable of “The Eagle and the Arrow” 2,500 years ago:

 “An Eagle was soaring through the air when suddenly it heard the whiz of an Arrow, and felt itself wounded to death. Slowly it fluttered down to the earth, with its life-blood pouring out of it. Looking down upon the Arrow with which it had been pierced, it found that the shaft of the Arrow had been feathered with one of its own plumes. "Alas!" it cried, as it died, "We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Robert L. Rosebrock is a U.S. Army Veteran, Vietnam War-era, HQ USARHAW, Schofield Barracks

Robert Rosebrock

U.S. Army, 1965-67, Schofield Barracks, Hqs., U.S Army, Hawaii. Director, The Veterans Revolution, Captain, the Old Veterans Guard, and Director, We the Veterans.