I Will Defend the Constitution

We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government. This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power -- is still the newest, 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.