February 16

Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. 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’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Ronald Reagan, 40^th President, 1981-1989

-From a speech now entitled "Encroaching Control", before the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce on March 30, 1961.-Reagan is widely known as an actor turned politician who was elected governor of California and President of the United States. What may not be so widely known is that while he was President of the Screen Actors Guild, he dealt with a Communist infiltration into the movie industry. The battle begun there would greatly influence his ideas and beliefs as he entered upon the state and then national scene. Before he was elected governor he spoke in favor of freedom, anti-communism, and conservative government. Such themes carried him to the highest office in the land. Here he speaks in Phoenix, Arizona, home of the conservative Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater.-"...But a few years ago, a funny thing happened to us on the way to the theater. For the first time, we ran into ugly reality face-to-face. While we were blissfully going along in our make believe world, on direct orders of the International Communist party, hardcore professional party organizers had infiltrated our industry, had worked quietly to create cells in some of our guilds and unions and communist front organizations which had deceived many of our people into supporting their apparently worthwhile causes. The aim of this communist infiltration was to subvert our screens to the dissemination of communist propaganda only after they had gained economic control of our industry... Lenin, in 1923, said, "We will take Eastern Europe, we will organize the hordes of Asia and we won't have to take the United States. We will surround it and that last bastion of capitalism will fall into our outstretched hand like overripe fruit." Well, they've taken Eastern Europe. They are organizing the hordes of Asia around the red colossus of China...Cuba is a Russian beach head 90 miles off our Florida coast and more telling that even that, 250,000 communist professional organizers are scattered up and down the length and breadth of Latin America. Discussing other weapons and their effectiveness against us, Bulganin said "We can't appeal to the American working man, he's too well fed. But when, through inflation, America has priced herself out of the world markets, and unemployment follows, then we will settle our debt with the United States."...Lenin, determined the idea that the communist party never would be a large party. That it would be a hard, small, professional cadre. That only those people who had proven themselves would be allowed membership and this small professional cadre would, as he said, manipulate and use the masses when they were needed and he referred to us as the masses, we were the willing idiots...Nikita Khrushchev said, "We can't expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until one day they will awaken to find they have communism."... James Madison speaking before the Virginia convention in 1788 said, "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation."..Our Founding Fathers, here in this country, brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man's history. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers. But only here did that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since, evolve the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and the ability to determine our own destiny. But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction... The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free. Thank You.