书城成功励志震撼世界的声音:名人励志演讲集萃(英汉双语版)
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第81章 A Time for Choosing(4)

I think we’re for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs,but we‘re against doling out money government to government,creating bureaucracy,if not socialism,all over the world.We set out to help 19countries.We’re helping 107.We‘ve spent 146billion dollars.With that money,we bought a 2million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie.We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers,extra wives for Kenya[n]government officials.We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity.In the last six years,52nations have bought 7billion dollars worth of our gold,and all 52are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.So,governments’programs,once launched,never disappear.Actually,a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we‘ll ever see on this earth.

Federal employees-federal employees number two and a half million;and federal,state,and local,one out of six of the nation’s work force employed by government.These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards.How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man‘s property without a warrant?They can impose a fine without a formal hearing,let alone a trial by jury?And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine.In Chico County,Arkansas,James Wier over-planted his rice allotment.The government obtained a 17,000dollar judgment.And a U.S.marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction.The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.

Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota,Norman Thomas,six-times 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.”I think that’s exactly what he will do.

But 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,because 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 till 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.

Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people.What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the-or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?And such machinery already exists.The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute.Every businessman has his own tale of harassment.Somewhere a perversion has taken place.Our natural,unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government,and freedom has never been so fragile,so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues.They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men-that we‘re to choose just between two personalities.

Well,what of this man that they would destroy-and in destroying,they would destroy that which he represents,the ideas that you and I hold dear?Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is?Well I’ve been privileged to know him“when”.I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office,and I can tell you personally,I‘ve never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who,in his own business before he entered politics,instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it.He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees.He took 50percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program,a pension plan for all his employees.He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn’t work.He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores.When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande,he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him.It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War,and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas.And he said that[there were]a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes.And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said,“Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona,go to runway such-and-such”,and they went down there,and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane.Every day in those weeks before Christmas,all day long,he‘d load up the plane,fly it to Arizona,fly them to their homes,fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign,this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer.His campaign managers were understandably impatient,but he said,“There aren’t many left who care what happens to her.I‘d like her to know I care.”This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son,“There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness,and when you begin to build your life on that rock,with the cement of the faith in God that you have,then you have a real start.”This is not a man who could carelessly send other people’s sons to war.And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I‘ve discussed academic,unless we realize we’re in a war that must be won.