NationStates Jolt Archive

Basically, what's your favorite speech you've ever heard/seen? What do you think is the best speech ever delivered?

I'm going to try to avoid the cliches of "I Have a Dream" and the like, so I'll say "Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus" by Mario Savio during Berkeley's Free Speech Movement: Linky (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4764831122424855444&q=Mario+Savio&hl=en)

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

I still feel inspired every time I hear it, despite the fact that since the time I first read it, I've listened to/watched it more times than I can count.

I don't know if this qualifies as a speech, but what the hell.

"If we confuse dissent with disloyalty, if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the. . . confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought."

I'm a bit of a fan of Murrow.

The speech captain adama makes in battlestar galactica after they find out they are at war :cool:

Bush's speech tonight inspired me............to puke.









seriously though

a movie speech..........once, but I am sure that doesn't count.

Bush's speech tonight inspired me............to puke.

he needs to keep his mouth shut

none not one speech

I don't remember it, but I know someone here has to...

We lucky few. We band of brothers.

This is driving me nuts, for the love of god someone identify it.

I don't remember it, but I know someone here has to...



This is driving me nuts, for the love of god someone identify it.

a World War Two General but i can't dig it up out of my head :headbang:

Edit and it was said in Band of Brothers

Shakespeare, Henry V, I believe.

Bartlet's stuff is usually good.

Shakespeare, Henry V, I believe.

THANK YOU!

*cookie*

Shakespeare, Henry V, I believe.

so that where he got it from

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.


yup

yup

after thinking on it yup i did lean that play an that was the only part i like of it

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Every time I hear this speech, I shoot arrows into my local French Restaurant.

what is perhaps the greatest speech delivered in american history:

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."...

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

The begining of Patton. It makes me want to go out and use germans to grease the tracks of my tanks and shoot people in the belly.

I also like to think of the goo that was my best friends face.

I'm a bit of a fan of Murrow.
Oh, good choice! That was a great one...

I happen to like the "Are You Okay?" monologue Jon Stewart gave on his first show after 9/11. It blew everyone else's speeches away, from other TV hosts to the President's own Ground Zero pledge.

Link to video of speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsAUqo7OhVQ).

Good evening, and welcome to the Daily Show. We are back. This is our first show since the tragedy in New York City, and there’s no other way really to start the show than to ask you at home the question that we asked the audience here tonight and that we’ve asked everybody that we know here in New York since September 11th, and that is "Are you okay?" And we pray that you are, and that your family is.

I'm sorry to do this to you. It’s another entertainment show beginning with an overwrought speech of a shaken host, and television is nothing if not redundant. So I apologize for that. It’s something that, unfortunately, we do for ourselves so that we can… drain whatever abscess is in our hearts, and move on to the business of making you laugh, which we haven’t been able to do very effectively lately.

Everyone’s checked in already. I know we’re late. I’m sure we’re getting in just under the wire before the cast of Survivor offers their insight into what to do in these situations.

They said to get back to work. And there were no jobs available for a man in the fetal position under his desk crying, which I gladly would have taken. So I come back here, and tonight’s show is not, obviously, a regular show. We looked through the vault, we found some clips that we thought might make you smile, which is really what’s necessary, I think, right about now.

A lot of folks have asked me, "What are you going to do when you get back? What are you going to say? I mean, jeez, what a terrible thing to have to do." And you know, I don’t see it as a burden, at all. I see it as a privilege. I see it as a privilege and everyone here does see it that way.

The show in general, we feel like, is a privilege. It’s just, even the idea that we can sit in the back of the country and make wisecracks – which is really what we do. We sit in the back and we throw spitballs -- but never forgetting the fact that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that. That is, a country that allows for open satire. And I know that sounds basic, and it sounds as though it goes without saying. But that’s really what this whole situation is about. It’s the difference between closed and open; it’s the difference between free and… burdened. And we don’t take that for granted here, by any stretch of the imagination. And our show has changed, I don’t doubt that. What it’s become, I don’t know… "subliminible" is not a punch line anymore. One day it will become that again, and Lord willing it will become that again, because it means that we have ridden out the storm.

But, the main reason that I wanted to speak tonight is not to tell you what this show is going to be, not to tell you about all the incredibly brave people that are here in New York and in Washington and around the country, but… we’ve had an unenduring pain here, and… an unendurable pain, and… I just, I wanted to tell you why I grieve – but why I don’t despair. I’m sorry… luckily we can edit this.

One of my first memories is of Martin Luther King being shot. I was five… and if you wonder if this feeling will pass… When I was five and he was shot, here’s what I remember about it: I was in school in Trenton and they shut the lights off and we got to sit under our desks, and we thought that was really cool, and they gave us cottage cheese, which was a cold lunch because there was rioting, but we didn’t know that. We just thought, "My God! We get to sit under our desks and eat cottage cheese!" And that’s what I remember about it. And that was a tremendous test of this country's fabric, and this country’s had many tests before that and after that, and…

The reason I don’t despair is because… this attack happened. It's not a dream. But the aftermath of it – the recovery – is a dream realized. And that is Martin Luther King's dream.

Whatever barriers we put up are gone, even if it's just momentary. And we’re judging people by, not the color of their skin, but the content of their character, and…

You know, all this talk about "these guys are criminal masterminds, they’ve gotten together their extraordinary guile and their wit and their skill…” It's… it’s… it’s a lie. Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see these guys, these firefighters, these policemen, and people from all over the country, literally, with buckets… rebuilding… that’s extraordinary. And that's why we’ve already won. They can't… it’s light. It's democracy. It’s … we’ve already won. They can't… shut that down.

They live in chaos. And chaos, it can't sustain itself – it never could. It's too easy and it's too unsatisfying.

The view… from my apartment… was the World Trade Center. And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This… symbol, of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce and it is gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty.

You can’t beat that.

So, we’re gonna take a break, and I’m gonna stop slobbering on myself and the desk, and… we’re gonna get back to this. And it’s gonna be fun and funny and it’s gonna be the same as it was, and I thank you. We’ll be right back.

JFK's "I am a donut" speech always does something to me. Can't quite describe it though.

Of american speakers, MLK's I have a dream.

Ever recorded: churchill's war speeches.

"We are told, sir, that herr hitler has a plan for invading the british isles. This has often been thought of before. When napoleon lay at boulogne for a year, with his flat-bottom boats and his grand army, he was told by someone: There are bitter weeds in england. There are certainly a great many more now that the British Expeditionary Force has returned."

We will go on to the end, We shall fight in france, we shall fight in the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strenght in the air! We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight in the beaches, we shall fight in the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.


"I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of christian civilization. Upon it depends our own british way of life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the united states, including all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new dark age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the british empire and its commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say - this, was there finest hour.


They all put shivers down my spine, even having heard them 50+ times.

Well, I'm quite a bit older than average on this forum.

I remember the Kennedy inaugural: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.... The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans....

Also Kennedy; Before this decade is out we will place a man on the moon and return him successfully to earth. ----Eik Mein Ein Berliner (Sorry to those who know German, don't have a clue of the spelling.

I also remember Bobby Kennedy; To seek a newer world...... Some people see things as they are and ask, Why? I dream things that never were and ask, Why Not?

Then of course all of the great King speeches. Too many to mention.

I know this is longer than most of you have lived but there hasn't been an outstanding speech since 1968. Oh, you can talk about Reagan, but he was really second class compared to Kennedys and King. We just have not had a leader. We have followers in leadership positions. We have not had one leader---World Wide---who has said, "I have a vision of what the future should look like, follow me to a better world." For some reason the bullets that killed Bobby and Martin also killed leadership and with it speech.

Also Kennedy; Before this decade is out we will place a man on the moon and return him successfully to earth. ----Eik Mein Ein Berliner (Sorry to those who know German, don't have a clue of the spelling.

I thought it was "Ich bin ein Berliner"--"I am a Berliner"(not the pastry)

There's not a single speech I've seen, heard, or read, that I haven't felt I could've done a much better job performing.

So no, I've not been inspired by any speeches, past or present.

*graciously eats cookie*

As for me, one speech holds a very close and dear place to my heart.

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 thought it was "Ich bin ein Berliner"--"I am a Berliner"(not the pastry)

Whether he is a pastry or not, one cannot deny that he must have had a pastry at least once in his life. Which means he might be a cannibal. But seriously, pastries are quite tasty, so I would not hold him responsible.

.....Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the british empire and its commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say - this, was their finest hour.


They all put shivers down my spine, even having heard them 50+ times.

This one is my choice too, specially the final paragraph.

http://www.history.com/media.do?action=clip&id=v3t4

The one from jarhead was good: "i better retire cause I CANT HEAR A FUCKIN THING!!" "HOORAH!" "GOOD JOB BOYS I JUST GOT A HARD ON" It was funny but it didnt inspire me. I think if you took the entirety of forrest gump and made it into a speech id cry.

MLK Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam."

"It's not a real choice. It's an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they're both owned by Proctor & Gamble This doesn't mean that one takes a position that is without nuance, that [...] the Democrats and Republicans are the same. Of course, they're not. Neither are Tide and Ivory Snow. Tide has oxy-boosting and Ivory Snow is a gentle cleanser." -Arundhati Roy

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6087&sectionID=1

*graciously eats cookie*

As for me, one speech holds a very close and dear place to my heart.


Why? Henry owned nearly a hundrud slaves when he made that speech.

The speech that Aragorn made in the film rendition of "The Return of the King" when the army of men are at the walls of Mordor and the Orcs come atrompin'

"Hold your ground, hold your ground. Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers; I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart from me. The day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight. By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand Men of the West!" *Collective drawing, and raising of swords*

Call me nerdy, or losery, but I think that was really good writing.

The speech that Aragorn made in the film rendition of "The Return of the King" when the army of men are at the walls of Mordor and the Orcs come atrompin'

"Hold your ground, hold your ground. Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers; I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart from me. The day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight. By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand Men of the West!" *Collective drawing, and raising of swords*

Call me nerdy, or losery, but I think that was really good writing.

I agree.

The speech the political officer made at the beginning of Call of Duty's Russian campaign... :rolleyes:

Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We have raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury--we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are $27.3 billion, and we have just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. 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.

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a "greater government activity in the affairs of the people." But they have been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves--and all of the things that I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say "the cold war will end through acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says that the profit motive has become outmoded, it must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state; or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader, and he said he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions in power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government." Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me--the free man and woman of this country--as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"--this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than the government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming is regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we have spent $43 in feed grain program for every bushel of corn we don't grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater as President would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he will find out that we have had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He will also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress an extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He will find that they have also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There is now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but who are farmers to know what is best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights are so diluted that public interest is almost anything that a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes for the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he is now going to start building public housing units in the thousands where heretofore we have only built them in the hundreds. But FHA and the Veterans Administration tell us that they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosures. For three decades, we have sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency. They have just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over $30 million on deposit in personal savings in their banks. When the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

So now we declare "war on poverty," or "you, too, can be a Bobby Baker!" Now, do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add $1 billion to the $45 million we are spending...one more program to the 30-odd we have--and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs--do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain that there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We are now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps, and we are going to put our young people in camps, but again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we are going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person that we help $4,700 a year! We can send them to Harvard for $2,700! Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who had come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning $250 a month. She wanted a divorce so that she could get an $80 raise. She is eligible for $330 a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who had already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we are denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we are always "against" things, never "for" anything. Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so. We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those who depend on them for livelihood. They have called it insurance to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified that it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is $298 billion in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble! And they are doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary...his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee $220 a month at age 65. The government promises $127. He could live it up until he is 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now, are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis so that people who do require those payments will find that they can get them when they are due...that the cupboard isn't bare? Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provisions for the non-earning years? Should we allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under these programs, which we cannot do? I think we are for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program was now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate planned inflation so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents' worth?

I think we are for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we are against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among the nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we are against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in Soviet colonies in the satellite nation.

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

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government 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 number 2.5 million, and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force is employed by the 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 in auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier overplanted his rice allotment. The government obtained a $17,000 judgment, and a U.S. marshal sold his 950-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work. Last February 19 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." I think that's exactly what he will do.

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 part 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. 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 or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? 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, inalienable 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 are 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 have 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 have never known a man in my life I believe 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 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provided nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by floods from 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. 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 this fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in the weeks before Christmas, all day long, he would load up the plane, fly to Arizona, fly them to their homes, then 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 upon 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 of the other problems I have discussed academic, unless we realize that we are in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but 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. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

The book, "The Art Of The Rifle" is probably the most inspirational book I've read.

The book, "The Art Of The Rifle" is probably the most inspirational book I've read.

Did you read Cooper's blog thingy?

Did you read Cooper's blog thingy?

Yes, I always did. He was very inspirational.

*graciously eats cookie*

As for me, one speech holds a very close and dear place to my heart.

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!

Actually, there's no evidence to say he ever said such a thing, since noone mentioned the 'liberty or death' speech until one autobiography in 1817. So it's quite possible it was made up.

At least, according to Bill Bryson.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's no one anywhere that seems to know what to do with us. Now into it. We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore. We sit in a house as slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won't say anything." Well I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crying in the streets. All I know is first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being. God Dammit, my life has value." So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Things have got to change my friends. You've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open your window, stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Not quite a speech but I like it.

Mario Cuomo's 1984 keynote address (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mariocuomo1984dnc.htm) to the Democratic convention in San Francisco:

We Democrats still have a dream. We still believe in this nation's future. And this is our answer to the question. This is our credo:

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do.

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

Our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. We would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.

We believe -- We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

We believe in firm but fair law and order.

We believe proudly in the union movement.

We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.

We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights.

We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child -- that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.

I will begin with the Bible where the words of the Lord are,
"Love thy neighbor as thyself" . . . and then our beloved Gita which says,
"The world is a garment worn by God, thy neighbor is in truth thyself" . . . and
finally the Holy Koran, "We shall remove all hatred from our hearts and recline on couches face to face, a band of brothers."~Ghandi

For the record I am not even part of the god squad

Isn't it amazing that younger people are inspired by speeches of movie scripts and not the words of real policy makers? I think that says a great deal about the leadership throughout the world during the last 40 or so years.

Does that mean when "conservatives" are in leadership positions there is less inspiration? Maybe by definition, they have no vision for the future, only a longing for a mythical past that never really existed.

I was at a lecture that Burt Rutan gave. It wasn't so much a speech, but a monologue on innovation and creativity. The lecture inspired me to finish my Ph.D. research that had been languishing and has made me look for creative ideas and innovative ways to solve problems in my day-to-day work.

Why? Henry owned nearly a hundrud slaves when he made that speech.

Maybe, and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves while he was president. They were human, and the product of their times. I will accept that.