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To my good friend and great Republican, Dick Nixon, and your charming
wife, Pat; my running mate and that wonderful Republican who has served
us well for so long, Bill Miller and his wife, Stephanie; to Thurston
Morton who has done such a commendable job in chairmaning this
Convention; to Mr. Herbert Hoover, who I hope is watching; and to that
great American and his wife, General and Mrs. Eisenhower; to my own
wife, my family, and to all of my fellow Republicans here assembled, and
Americans across this great Nation.
From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together,
dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man.
Together we will win.
I accept your nomination with a deep sense of humility. I accept, too
responsibility that goes with it, and I seek your continued help and
continued guidance. My fellow Republicans, our cause is too great for
any man to feel worthy of it. Our task would be too great for any man,
did he not have with him the heart and the hands of this great
Republican Party, and I promise you tonight that every fiber of my being
is consecrated to our cause; that nothing shall be lacking from the
struggle that can be brought to it by enthusiasm, by devotion, and plain
hard work. In this world no person, no party can guarantee anything,
but what we can and what we shall do is to deserve victory, and victory
will be ours.
The good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave
and to flourish as the land of the free-not to stagnate in the swampland
of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of communism.
Now, my fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom.
Our people have followed false prophets. We must, and we shall, return
to proven ways– not because they are old, but because they are true. We
must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom.
And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and
every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom— freedom
made orderly for this nation by our constitutional government; freedom
under a government limited by laws of nature and of nature’s God;
freedom—balanced so that liberty lacking order will not become the
slavery of the prison cell; balanced so that liberty lacking order will
not become the license of the mob and of the jungle.
Now, we Americans understand freedom. We have earned it, we have
lived for it, and we have died for it. This Nation and its people are
freedom’s model in a searching world. We can be freedom’s missionaries
in a doubting world. But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew
freedom’s mission in our own hearts and in our own homes.
During four futile years, the administration which we shall replace
has distorted and lost that faith. It has talked and talked and talked
and talked the words of freedom. Now, failures cement the wall of shame
in Berlin. Failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs. Failures
mark the slow death of freedom in Laos. Failures infest the jungles of
Vietnam. And failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and
undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations—the NATO
community. Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening
wills, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions
and to new excesses. Because of this administration we are tonight a
world divided— we are a Nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of
diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding at a
pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without
responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.
Rather than useful jobs in our country, people have been offered
bureaucratic “make work,” rather than moral leadership, they have been
given bread and circuses, spectacles, and, yes, they have even been
given scandals. Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in
our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our
elders and there is a virtual despair among the many who look beyond
material success for the inner meaning of their lives. Where examples of
morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men, seeking great
wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest
levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.
Now, certainly, simple honesty is not too much to demand of men in
government. We find it in most. Republicans demand it from everyone.
They demand it from everyone no matter how exalted or protected his
position might be. The growing menace in our country tonight, to
personal safety, to life, to limb and property, in homes, in churches,
on the playgrounds, and places of business, particularly in our great
cities, is the mounting concern, or should be, of every thoughtful
citizen in the United States.
Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign
aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any
government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one
that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows
us—demonstrates that nothing— nothing prepares the way for tyranny more
than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies
and marauders.
Now, we Republicans see all this as more, much more, than the rest:
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.
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. 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 of equality, ladies and
gentlemen. 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 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 illusion that a world of conflict will somehow mysteriously resolve
itself into a world of harmony, if we just don’t rock the boat or
irritate the forces of aggression—and this is hogwash.
It is further the cause of Republicanism to remind ourselves, and the
world, that only the strong can remain free, that only the strong can
keep the peace.
Now, I needn’t remind you, or my fellow Americans regardless of
party, that Republicans have shouldered this hard responsibility and
marched in this cause before. It was Republican leadership under Dwight
Eisenhower that kept the peace, and passed along to this administration
the mightiest arsenal for defense the world has ever known. And I
needn’t remind you that it was the strength and the unbelievable will of
the Eisenhower years that kept the peace by using our strength, by
using it in the Formosa Straits and in Lebanon and by showing it
courageously at all times.
It was during those Republican years that the thrust of Communist
imperialism was blunted. It was during those years of Republican
leadership that this world moved closer, not to war, but closer to
peace, than at any other time in the three decades just passed.
And I needn’t remind you—but I will—that it’s been during Democratic
years that our strength to deter war has stood still, and even gone into
a planned decline. It has been during Democratic years that we have
weakly stumbled into conflict, timidly refusing to draw our own lines
against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our people of our
full participation, and tragically, letting our finest men die on
battlefields (unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride or the prospect of
victory).
Yesterday it was Korea. Tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones of this.
Don’t try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And
yet the President, who is Commander-in-Chief of our forces, refuses to
say—refuses to say, mind you, whether or not the objective over there is
victory. And his Secretary of Defense continues to mislead and
misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by.
And I needn’t remind you, but I will; it has been during Democratic
years that a billion persons were cast into Communist captivity and
their fate cynically sealed.
Today in our beloved country we have an administration which seems
eager to deal with communism in every coin known—from gold to wheat,
from consulates to confidence, and even human freedom itself.
The Republican cause demands that we brand communism as a principal
disturber of peace in the world today. Indeed, we should brand it as the
only significant disturber of the peace, and we must make clear that
until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced and its rejections
with all nations tempered, communism and the governments it now controls
are enemies of every man on earth who is or wants to be free.
We here in America can keep the peace only if we remain vigilant and
only if we remain strong. Only if we keep our eyes open and keep our
guard up can we prevent war. And I want to make this abundantly clear—I
don’t intend to let peace or freedom be torn from our grasp because of
lack of strength or lack of will —and that I promise you Americans.
I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to
its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it
will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can
see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world
worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every
sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of
those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that
all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic
civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly
across its borders, communicating openly across the world. This is a
goal far, far more meaningful than a moon shot.
It’s a truly inspiring goal for all free men to set for themselves
during the latter half of the twentieth century. I can also see— and all
free men must thrill to—the events of this Atlantic civilization joined
by its great ocean highway to the United States. What a destiny, what a
destiny can be ours to stand as a great central pillar linking Europe,
the Americans and the venerable and vital peoples and cultures of the
Pacific. I can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be
linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and
misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising
tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the
misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or
wiped away in an hour. But we pledge—we pledge that human sympathy—what
our neighbors to the South call that attitude of “simpatico”—no less
than enlightened self’-interest will be our guide.
I can see this Atlantic civilization galvanizing and guiding emergent nations everywhere.
I know this freedom is not the fruit of every soil. I know that our
own freedom was achieved through centuries, by unremitting efforts by
brave and wise men. I know that the road to freedom is a long and a
challenging road. I know also that some men may walk away from it, that
some men resist challenge, accepting the false security of governmental
paternalism.
And I pledge that the America I envision in the years ahead will
extend its hand in health, in teaching and in cultivation, so that all
new nations will be at least encouraged to go our way, so that they will
not wander down the dark alleys of tyranny or to the dead-end streets
of collectivism. My fellow Republicans, we do no man a service by hiding
freedom’s light under a bushel of mistaken humility.
I seek an American proud of its past, proud of its ways, proud of its
dreams, and determined actively to proclaim them. But our example to
the world must, like charity, begin at home.
In our vision of a good and decent future, free and peaceful, there
must be room for deliberation of the energy and talent of the
individual—otherwise our vision is blind at the outset.
We must assure a society here which, while never abandoning the needy
or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunity for the
creative and the productive. We must know the whole good is the product
of many single contributions.
I cherish a day when our children once again will restore as heroes
the sort of men and women who—unafraid and undaunted—pursue the truth,
strive to cure disease, subdue and make fruitful our natural environment
and produce the inventive engines of production, science, and
technology.
This Nation, whose creative people have enhanced this entire span of
history, should again thrive upon the greatness of all those things
which we, as individual citizens, can and should do. During Republican
years, this again will be a nation of men and women, of families proud
of their role, jealous of their responsibilities, unlimited in their
aspirations—a Nation where all who can will be self-reliant.
We Republicans see in our constitutional form of government the great
framework which assures the orderly but dynamic fulfillment of the
whole man, and we see the whole man as the great reason for instituting
orderly government in the first place.
We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering
private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the
whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of
private property the only durable foundation for constitutional
government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished
diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and
accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone’s life for him—we seek
only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive,
with government performing only those needed and constitutionally
sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwisebe performed.
We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent
responsibilities of maintaining a stable monetary and fiscal climate,
encouraging a free and a competitive economy and enforcing law and
order. Thus do we seek inventiveness, diversity, and creativity within a
stable order, for we Republicans define government’s role where needed
at many, many levels, preferably through the one closest to the people
involved.
Our towns and our cities, then our counties, then our states, then
our regional contacts—and only then, the national government. That, let
me remind you, is the ladder of liberty, built by decentralized power.
On it also we must have balance between the branches of government at
every level.
Balance, diversity, creativity—these are the elements of Republican
equation. Republicans agree, Republicans agree heartily to disagree on
many, many of their applications, but we have never disagreed on the
basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans.
This is a party, this Republican Party, a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.
Back in 1858 Abraham Lincoln said this of the Republican party—and I
quote him, because he probably could have said it during the last week
or so: “It was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile
elements” in 1858. Yet all of these elements agreed on one paramount
objective: To arrest the progress of slavery, and place it in the course
of ultimate extinction.
Today, as then, but more urgently and more broadly than then, the
task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home and safeguarding it
from the forces of tyranny abroad is great enough to challenge all our
resources and to require all our strength. Anyone who joins us in all
sincerity, we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don’t
expect to enter our ranks in any case. And let our Republicanism, so
focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and
stupid labels.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no
vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of
justice is no virtue.
The beauty of the very system we Republicans are pledged to restore
and revitalize, the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its
reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest
differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are
not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and
through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the
world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our
Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty
throughout the world.
Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals.
This Party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to
freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch
here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown
the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.
I repeat, I accept your nomination with humbleness, with pride, and
you and I are going to fight for the goodness of our land. Thank you.
