Ronald Reagan Quotes About Liberalism
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Over hundred years ago Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. There was wide distribution of land and they didn't confiscate anyone's privately owned land... We need an industrial Homestead Act.
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I can't help but believe that in the future we will see in the United States and throughout the Western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step, employee ownership. It is a path that befits a free people.
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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.
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Some years ago a top Ford official was showing the late Walter Reuther through the very automates plant in Cleveland, Ohio and he said to him jokingly, "Walter, you'll have a hard time collecting union dues from these machines." and Walter said, "you are going to have more trouble trying to sell automobiles to them." Both of them let it stop there. There was a logical answer to that ... the owners of the machines could buy automobiles and if you increase the number of owners you increase the number of consumers.
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It should be clear to everyone that the nation's steadfast policy should afford every American of working age a realistic opportunity to acquire the ownership and control of some meaningful form of property in a growing national economy.
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Could there be anything but widespread misery, where a privileged few controlled a nation's wealth, while millions labored for a pittance, and millions more were desperate for want of employment?
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Could there be anything resembling a free enterprise economy, if wealth and property were concentrated in the hands of a few, while the great majority owned little more than the shirts on their backs?
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Today it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that have brought us our problems: The Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business, and big labor.
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For the average American, the message is clear. Liberalism is no longer the answer. It is the problem.
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The people of Central America - and, in a broader sense, the entire developing world - need to know first-hand that freedom and opportunity are not just for the elite, but the birthright of every citizen; that property is not just something enjoyed by a few, but can be owned by any individual who works hard and makes correct decisions.
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Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
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Our economic assistance must be carefully targeted, and must make maximum use of the energy and efforts of the private sector... Economic freedom is the world's mightiest engine for abundance and social justice... Developing countries need to be encouraged to experiment with a growing variety of arrangements for profit sharing and expanded capital ownership.
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Could there be a better answer to the stupidity of Karl Marx than millions of workers individually sharing in the ownership of the means of production.
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Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
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I've long believed one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or corporation.
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Meanwhile, what about the workers in those state monopolies that are being put up for sale? I am reminded of a technique for employee ownership that has worked well for many U.S. companies. It goes by various names, but the best known is "Employee Stock Ownership Program," or ESOP.
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Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program.
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The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
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Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.
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f you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals - if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.
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This is not to say that the government should confiscate from the "haves" and bestow upon the "have-nots", beyond the requirements of a compassionate welfare program to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. Far from it. But it is to say that our duty is to foster a strong, vibrant wealth-producing economy which operates in such a way that new additions to wealth accrue to those who presently have little or no ownership stake in their country.
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The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
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