Ronald Reagan
gave his famous speech “A Time For Choosing” a week before Election Day 1964. Nearly six decades later, the speech remains relevant, and the parallels to the circumstances we face today are striking. The battles against big government and Marxist do-gooders have changed only in the sense that they have intensified. Americans are still debating our role in the world—even as war rages in Europe. We are uncertain of our future, as we were then.
Reagan decried a bloated welfare state, a militant tax-and-spending regime in Washington, and the blatant bribing of Americans with their own tax dollars for their votes. Full Democratic control of Washington over the past two years has produced the kind of government Reagan could have imagined only in a fever dream. The inflationary Inflation Reduction Act and the unconstitutional forgiveness of student loans via executive fiat were shameless attempts to buy votes before a midterm election.
The choice before Americans next month is simple. Will we sell our votes to politicians promising us prosperity if only we give them more of our money? Will we choose to be free—acknowledging the risks and challenges that inevitably accompany freedom—or will we choose to be dependent? Will we, as Reagan said, “believe in our capacity for self-government, or 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”?
As Republicans, we believe in the challenge of freedom and individual responsibility. We affirm, as the Founders did, that prosperity and innovation and greatness are born from free enterprise, and that the government exists to protect that freedom, not diminish it. The good news is that polling indicates most Americans agree. This election may well be a referendum on the kind of governance Reagan warned us about decades ago.
But it is also a time for choosing for conservatives. We have to choose how we will fight for the great vision that Reagan articulated.
The right is divided these days, which is odd, considering that by any measure there are fewer ideological and policy differences within the Republican Party than ever. Yet factions persist. The divisions are becoming more severe and more toxic. Some in our movement insist on sorting themselves…
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