On the 4th July

As the United States of America celebrates Independence Day and a statue of Ronald Reagan is unveiled in Grosvenor Square I thought some Ronald Reagan quotations would be in order, do read them and think about what they say:

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn't so."

"Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this [surrender], 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?"

"The size of the Federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern."

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

"I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."


And finally a quotation that is often attributed to Ronald Regan but is actually one of Gerald Ford's:
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."