JOHN MCCORMACK at Nationalreview online's "The Corner" posts a quote from a two-minute TV commercial, by Republican Marco Rubio who closes out his campaign for US Senator from Florida by coming back to the theme of preserving American exceptionalism:
“It’s very clear. If we stay on this road Washington has us on right now, we will risk the essence of what makes us exceptional. We will lose what makes us unique.His parents were refuges from Cuba.
“I know this because this idea about America being exceptional is not something I read in a book. As the son of exiles, my parents were born into a society pretty much like every other in the world where if you’re not from the right family or with enough money you can only go so far.
“And that is a very different place from our America – a place where the son of bartender doesn’t have to become a bartender and where the son of a maid can achieve any dream.
“So now we’re being asked whether we want to keep all that or whether we want to become more like the place my parents came from.
In 1964 when Ronald Reagan was campaigning for Barry Goldwater he gave what has been called "The Speech." I was a high school student at the time and saw it at home on TV and have never forgotten it. One of the most stirring parts is where Reagan said:
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the 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 capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
Goldwater lost to LBJ in a landslide and as a result we lost some of our freedom to "The Great Society" but the fight goes on..... rise up America !
