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AN ALL-PURPOSE PROGRESSIVE STEMWINDER?
This is planned to be an all-purpose speech for our side. I’m not sure how long it will be but I’ll do my best to keep it from being a stemwinder, that is, a speech that lasts too long.
Ronald Reagan once said, he wanted an America where anyone could get rich. Anyone?
What do all of you think of that? I want an America where anyone, including minimum wage workers, can earn a decent living.Where everyone can have enough nutritious and good-tasting food, a decent roof over their heads which can have a controlled temperature, be dressed decently, can actually retire and not have the threat of ruin hanging over our heads in the event of serious illness.
Which America do you think is closer to the Founders’ vision? Let me give you a quote or two from those Founders which I hope will help:
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of moneyed corporations, which….bid defiance already to the laws of this country.”
And again:
“All the property that is necessary to the Preservation of the [Person] and the propagation of the Species is [a person’s] natural right which none can deprive [them] of, but property superfluous to that Purpose is by right the property of the Public who by their laws have created it and, whenever the Public may so desire, may otherwise dispose of it.”
Pretty revolutionary, no? What this Founder says is, we all have a right to as much resources as we need to maintain ourselves without unnecessary discomfort and to bring up (and educate?) a family in at least modest comfort, but more than that is by right the property of the public, that is, you…