○  1964 republican national convention address  ○

now, we republicans see all this as more, much more, than the result of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. we see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature, and his destiny. those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will, and this nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of god as the author of freedom.

now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. they -- and let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. their mistaken course stems from false notions, ladies and gentlemen, of equality. equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

fellow republicans, it is the cause of republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which -- which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. it is the cause of republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people. and, so help us god, that is exactly what a republican president will do with the help of a republican congress.

it is further the cause of republicanism to restore a clear understanding of the tyranny of man over man in the world at large. it is our cause to dispel the foggy thinking which avoids hard decisions in the delusion that a world of conflict will somehow mysterio

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